EDITOR'S PREFACE.

I. Period and Sources of the present Volume.—With the exception of
the entries on pp. 268, 269, 270, touching incidents of Charles the
Second's 15th and 18th regnal years, the matters submitted to historical
students in this fourth volume of the publications of the Middlesex
County Records Society have been taken from those of the sessional
archives resting at the Clerkenwell Sessions House, that pertain to the
period, opening with the 19th year of Charles II. and closing with
James the Second's abdication.

II. Records temp. Charles II.—Comprising the latest of the extant
folios of the great Gaol Delivery Register, which afford a comprehensive
and instructive view of crime and its consequences in Middlesex from
1608 to 1672 a.d. (in which last-named year the register comes to an
end, either from the accidental loss or wilful withdrawal of subsequent
folios of Charles the Second's actual reign) the Middlesex County
Records temp. Charles II. comprise also (a) an imperfect series of Gaol
Delivery Books, (b) an imperfect series of Sessions of Peace Books,
(c) several ill-preserved Process Books of Indictments, (d) a considerable
body of Gaol Delivery Rolls, to wit, files of indictments, recognizances,
and other documents, made up roll-wise, (e) a much larger collection of
big. Sessions of Peace Files, made up in the same manner, in so far as it
is possible to give such massive and cumbrous files the outward show of
rolls, (f) several heavy files of Certificates of Convictions of Conventiclers, and (g) several Newgate Calendars and pieces of Newgate Calendars; all of which books, sets of documents, and several Newgate
Calendars and pieces of Calendars have been examined and worked upon
for the production of the present volume.

(1.) Gaol Delivery Register.—Through some inadvertence on my
own part, and also perhaps through an accidental misordering of the
great folios, I had been so confident the Register would cover the
whole of Charles the Second's reign, that I was greatly surprised at
finding myself much sooner than I had expected at the end of the great
volumes of criminal record. The discovery of the real state of the case
was the more mortifying to me, because in speaking under the misapprehension I had encouraged one of my correspondents to be more than
hopeful that the Great Register would enable me to produce a perfect
list of the persons sentenced to death in Charles's time for high treason
done in Middlesex.

(2.) Gaol Delivery Books.—It was true that I still had the Gaol
Delivery Books to fall back upon; but even if they had been a perfect
series and had escaped injury from rot and rough usage, those sessional
pamphlets, containing no accounts of Special Sessions of Oyer and
Terminer, nor any important sessional Orders, would have been a poor
substitute for the missing folios of the Great Register. Searchers of the
ensuing calendar will see that the imperfect series of meagre and sometimes grievously attenuated G. D. Books afforded me some noteworthy
particulars; but all the information I gleaned from those sessional
pamphlets is trivial in comparison with what I should have learnt from
the later folios of the great Register, had they been preserved for my
use.

(3.) Sessions of Peace Books.—Containing no sessional orders of
moment, the S. P. pamphlets are no less insufficient substitutes for the
several missing volumes of the great Sessions of Peace Register, whose
extant folios come down no later than 1667, a date just five years
short of the time at which the folios of the Gaol Delivery Register come
to an end.

(4.) Gaol Delivery Rolls.—The G. D. files for some of the years
covered by the present volume are perfect in their series and have
suffered in no great degree from destructive influences; but unfortunately this description is not applicable to the files pertaining to those
years, whose criminal annals are especially interesting to historical
enquirers. For example, there remain to us only six files of 30 Chas. II.,
five files of 31 Chas. II., and six files of 32 Chas. II., to wit, seventeen
files instead of at least twenty-four files for the three consecutive years;
and whilst most of these seventeen remaining files have been greatly
diminished by rot or losses resulting from breakage of threads, they do
not comprise a single bundle of documents that has not been considerably attenuated by misadventure. Of the indictments originally
put away in the rolled files of these three successive years, perhaps as
many as forty per cent. have perished irrecoverably.

(5.) Sessions of Peace Rolls.—Big and heavy in the opening years of
Charles the Second's actual- reign, the S.P. files steadily grow in bulk
and weight till they become painfully cumbrous to the searcher who
persists in turning over their writings, parchment by parchment. Consequent in some degree on the increasing thickness of the membranes
and the loose penmanship of clerks, who covered with every twenty
words the extent of parchment on which the neater draughtsmen of
James the First's time put twice and even thrice as many words, the
inconvenient magnitude and weight of these files are in perhaps a
greater degree referable to the enormity of the number of the documents that came into existence through the law's stubborn conflict with
recusants and conventiclers.

(6.) Certificates of Convictions of Conventiclers.—The earliest C. C. C.
dealt with in the present volume were made in July 34 Charles II.,
none of the many similar certificates made in previous years of the
period covered by this volume having been preserved at Clerkenwell.

(7.) Newgate Calendars.—The several entire Newgate Calendars and
several pieces of Calendars, to which reference is made, and matters
taken from which are exhibited in the body of this volume, have long
served as wrappers of goal-delivery files, and in that service have come
to be so worn and defaced as to be illegible in many places of their
over-written sides.

(8.) Language of the Middlesex Records temp. Charles II.—The
counter-revolution, which placed the crown of England on Charles the
Second's head, and as far as possible restored the old order of things,
having reintroduced the Latin tongue to the national archives, the
curial records and instruments of the Middlesex Justices differed in no
important respect from the curial records and instruments of the
Justices of Charles the First's earlier and happiest years. But in divers
trivial matters—details of small concern to the historian and no moment
whatever to the mere lawyer, though details of considerable interest to
legal antiquaries—the Latin of the later differs from the Latin of the
earlier writings. For example, one searches the post-commonwealth
court-books and indictments in vain for the "nec r'" which the parliamentarian Clerk of the Peace translated into "doth not fly" and
"noe flieing," when in obedience to the will of the parliament he substituted sufficient English for graceless Latin, to the best of his
ability, in the sessional evidences. In vain also one searches the court
books and the annotations of the indictments, drawn during Charles
the Second's actual reign, for the "nec rec'" which in the annotations
of the Elizabethan indictments invariably followed every record of an
acquittal of felony. The Latin that returned to the Middlesex records
in 1661 failed to restore "nec r'" (= nec rec' = 'nec recessit' and
'nec recesserunt') to its former place upon the books and parchments.
Instead of writing "nec r'" after every record of an acquittal of felony,
the Clerk of the Peace, who in the way of his official duty restored
Latin to the sessional archives of the old metropolitan county, preferred
to write "nec se retrax'" (= nec se retraxit = nor did he withdraw
himself), by which note he unquestionably meant to put it upon record
that, besides acquitting the culprit of the felony for which he or she
had been tried, the jury had also acquitted him or her of the minor
offence of having fled from justice.

Having been thus discharged from further service on the sessional
records of Middlesex as a symbol for recessit, "rec'" never again served
the county in that particular capacity. But ere long "rec'" was required to serve its native shire in a twofold capacity,—(1) as a symbol
for divers inflexions of recuso, as in "rec' cap' jur'=he she or they
refused to take the oath, and (2) as a symbol for as many inflexions of
recipio, as in "prod' certificat' q'd rec' sac. cen' d'n'ce"=he produced a
certificate that he had taken the sacrament of the Lord's supper. So
long as "rec'" bore two such widely different meanings in the clerical
annotations of the Middlesex indictments and recognizances, the accompanying symbols of the stenographic note in which it figured showed in
which of the two senses it was used for that turn. It interested me to
learn from Mr. F. A. Inderwick's sound and most interesting SideLights On the Stuarts(fn. 1) that "nec rec'" was used in its old Elizabethan
sense for "nec recessit" in the gaol books of the Western Circuit temp.
James II. That "nec rec'" survived in the criminal records of the
West of England so long after it had perished from the sessional archives
of Middlesex indicates how differently such records were 'kept' by
Clerks of the Peace in different parts of the kingdom in the seventeenth
century. Enough for the present of "nec rec'." But in a later division
of this editorial preface, I shall, in the interest of the antiquaries, say
something more of the curious and perplexing note.

III. Records temp. James II.—Like the Middlesex records of the last
twelve years of Charles the Second's time, the Middlesex records of
James the Second's brief reign comprise no Gaol Delivery Register.
Like the sessional records of the metropolitan county for the last
seventeen years of Charles the Second's reign, the sessional records of
the metropolitan county temp. James II. comprise no Sessions of Peace
Register. The disappearance of the folios of the two Registers for two
such large parts of the period covered by the present volume is a matter
for lively regret. To realize how much he misses in the present volume
through the disappearance of the missing folios, the reader has only
to turn over the leaves of Vols. II. and III. of Middlesex County
Records, and observe how much of their most interesting and valuable
information came to them from the folios of the two Registers. In
absence of the folios that have so unfortunately passed from official
custody, I could neither prepare a full and reliable Table of the fluctuations of the penal Death-Rate of Middlesex from 19 Charles II. to
4 James II., nor produce materials for another chapter of the story of
penal transportation to the colonies during the same period. Moreover, the withdrawal of the two sets of folios rendered me powerless to
produce an exact list of the persons convicted at the Old Bailey of high
treasons done in Middlesex under our last two Stuart kings.

In other respects, the Middlesex records pertaining to James the
Second's regnal term are insufficient. The Gaol Delivery Books and
the Sessions of Peace Books are even more defective than the
sessional pamphlets of Charles the Second's time. A better
account can, however, be given of the Certificates of Convictions of
Conventiclers, the Gaol Delivery Rolls, the Sessions of Peace Rolls,
and the Newgate Calendars. The bundles of C. C. C, 1 and 2 James
II., yield a large number of particulars that will be serviceable to
historians of Anglican Nonconformity in the seventeenth century.
Though some of the packets have lost many of their original parchments, the G. D. Rolls are, upon the whole, a satisfactory collection;
and no complaint can be made of the S. P. Rolls, either on the score
of deficiency of number or badness of condition. Without adding
much to our knowledge of Middlesex under James II., the two sets of
rolled files for the three years and something over ten months of James's
brief and unfortunate reign have yielded a considerable number of
particulars, that will assist students in their endeavours to realize the
state of political ferment and restlessness and expectancy, in which
the suburban Londoners of the lower social grades spent their time
from the outbreak of Monmouth's rebellion, to the moment when the
last of our Stuart kings slipt from the throne and passed into exile.

IV. Choice of Documents.— Speaking in the preface to Middlesex
County Records, Vol. I. p. xlix., of the various considerations that had
determined my choice of documents for especial notice in the ensuing
calendar, I told my readers that throughout my labours on the matters
set forth in the body of the book, I had been controlled by the opinion
that I ought to call attention to all those writings which afforded
particulars, however minute, of new or otherwise peculiar information
likely to be in any way or degree serviceable to historians, biographers,
students in any department of literary research, or artists in form
and colour. Saying that I had been careful to give the substance of
every indictment and every recognizance that referred in any way to
any movement or state of affairs fairly to be designated as historic,
yielded new evidence touching an obsolete usage, or was likely to
enlarge an ordinary reader's knowledge of the pursuits, serious
interests, pleasures, troubles, costume, personal ornaments, domestic
furniture, social conditions, and moral characteristicts of our ancestors
during the later half of the Tudor period, I remarked that after giving
abundant evidence of a usage or other matter of greater or less interest,
I had forborne to render the evidence wearisomely superabundant by
cumbering my pages with needless examples. On the other hand,
I observed in the same paragraph, that when it had appeared needful
to display every scrap of testimony concerning a state of things, I had
not forborne to do so from a fear of provoking charges of prolixity and
of delighting in vain repetitions.

After working with these aims and designs on the manuscripts of the
Tudor period, I kept the same ends steadily in view, whilst I was
making the two calendars of matters taken from the records of James
the First's time, and the records that came into existence during
Charles the First's regnal term, the Commonwealth, and the first seven
years of Charles the Second's actual reign. In the same way I have
dealt with the manuscripts that have been searched and manipulated
for the purposes of the present volume. Forbearing to notice those of the
Gaol Delivery indictments, which merely afford superfluous evidence
that the graver crimes were of frequent occurrence in Middlesex during
the reigns of our two last Stuart kings, and that at the successive
sessions of Gaol Delivery from 1667 to 1689 obscure culprits were
tried at the Old Bailey for felonies done within the metropolitan
county, I have forborne to cumber my calendar with needless testimony
that during the same period many thousands of mean and quite uninteresting persons were indicted at Sessions of Peace for common
assaults, hindering officers in the performance of their duty, being
drunk and disorderly, breaking windows, pilfering articles under the
value of twelve pence, brawling in churches, cheating and cosening,
deserting service, entertaining lodgers without licence, harbouring subtenants, following vocations without having served apprenticeship to
them, keeping unlicensed ale-houses, keeping bowling-alleys and
gambling-houses, rioting, neglecting to repair highways, playing prohibited games, quarrelling and fomenting quarrels, stopping watercourses, blocking public thoroughfares, refusing to keep watch,
neglecting to scour sewers or to empty cesspools, selling bread by short
weight, selling milk or beer by short measure, swearing profanely,
committing, in short, one or more of the countless petty trespasses and
misdemeanours for which disorderly persons are seen by my earlier
calendars to have been brought before Justices of the Peace in the
seventeenth century. Whilst I worked on the big and unwieldy S. P.
files of the period covered by the present volume, turning over their
parchments throughout the successive days of successive weeks, and all
the time keeping a sharp look-out for noticeable matters, it was only
once in a while, sometimes only once in a long morning's work, that I
came on a writing that had a claim to be noticed. On other days I
was so fortunate as to come in the same file on a series of documents
that afforded several hours of employment with my pen. It was after
some days of tedious toil and few prizes, that I came upon a 'great
find' of a new sort of indictments in the S. P. files of Charles the
Second's 36th regnal year, the bill on which numerous householders
were indicted for leaving their cellar doors open into the streets by
night as well as by day. Of these novel and suggestive indictments,
pointing to a particular peril of the London streets during the hours of
darkness, I shall speak more fully in a later paragraph of this preface.

Of some classes of indictments I notice in my calendar every
example, still preserved in the sessional rolls. For example, I have
noticed all the indictments for high treasons done by individuals in
conspiring to take the king's life and subvert his government, or done
by persons in levying war against the sovereign within the metropolitan
county, or done by Catholic priests in traitorously being and remaining
in Middlesex, in defiance of law which required them to keep out of
His Majesty's dominions. I have also noticed all indictments for the
minor political offences from the high misdemeanour of uttering
seditious words against the sovereign to the comparatively trivial malfeasance of speaking disdainfully of a Justice of the Peace. Prominence
is accorded in the calendar to all prosecutions for writing or publishing
seditious books and defamatory pamphlets, and also to the several cases
in which persons were indicted for producing indecent publications,
that were calculated to debauch the minds of young and frivolous
perusers. To enable students to realize the frequency with which an
especially cruel offence was perpetrated in Middlesex under our last
two Stuart kings, and also to realize how inadequately the offence was
punished, I have displayed all the bills on which English men and
women were proceeded against for seizing young people unawares on
the river's side, spiriting them on board ship, and selling them for slaves
to West Indian planters. To show the crimes of which Englishmen of
gentle birth were sometimes guilty, and the depths of depravity to
which they sometimes sunk in the later half of the seventeenth century,
I have displayed in my pages the substance of all the various indictments that point to some of the ways by which English gentlemen of
defective morality dropt to dishonour or went to utter ruin in the days
when Samuel Pepys was Secretary to the Admiralty. From the large
number of True Bills on which Catholic recusants and Protestant
recusants were proceeded against for keeping away from the services of
the national church, the bills on which Anglican dissenters were
indicted for having been present at unlawful assemblies under colour of
exercising religion, the large number of recognizances by which persons
were bound to appear before Justices of the Peace and answer to
charges of religious non-conformity, and the heavy packets of Certificates of Convictions of Conventiclers, I have drawn and compressed
into my pages every matter, preserved in the same evidences, in any
degree likely to be serviceable to future historians, of the religious
parties and dissensions that embittered English society in the period
covered by the present volume.

V. Trials for High Treason.—In their present imperfect state the
Gaol Delivery files comprise a large number of indictments, on which
individuals were tried for high treasons of a political or politico-religious
character done in Middlesex temp. Charles II., besides several true bills
on which coiners of counterfeit money were arraigned and dealt with as
traitors, in respect to the crimes they had perpetrated in the pursuit of
their nefarious occupation. In the body of this volume notice is taken
of some of the coiners of spurious money, but readers of this division
of my preface may dismiss from their consideration the perpetrators of
mere 'mint-treasons,' and confine their attention to the more historic
offenders who were charged with conspiring to take the king's life and
subvert his government, or with levying war against His Majesty, or
with being Catholic priests guilty of traitorously being and remaining in
Middlesex.

(1.) Arraignment and Trial of Participators in Danvers's Plot.—The
earliest of the notable indictments for high treason in Charles's actual reign,
preserved amongst the Clerkenwell muniments, is the bill (vide Vol. III.
p. 376) on which ten individuals were put to trial at the Old Bailey in
April, 18 Charles II., i.e. 1666 a.d., as participators in the conspiracy
which is sometimes styled Danvers's Conspiracy, after Colonel Danvers,
the prime mover in the affair, who had the good fortune to elude the
officers of the law and escape to the country. By this bill William
Saunderson alias Saunders yeoman, John Rathbon gentleman, John
Beech tailor, Henry Tucker tailor, Thomas Flynt gentleman, Thomas
Evans milliner, John Milles carpenter, William Westcott yeoman, John
Cole tailor, and Samuel Swinfen tailor, all ten being described in the
bill as late of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, were charged with having on
30th August, 17 Charles II., i.e. 1665 a.d., conspired at the said parish
to overthrow the ancient government of this kingdom of England, and
to depose the now king thereof, and totally deprive him of his crown
and royal rule, and to make war against him, and with having on the
same day for the accomplishment of these treasons and traitorous
designs and imaginations conspired and agreed to put the said now
king to death, and to seize and take possession of the same king's
palace called Whitehall, and the City and Tower of London, and divers
other strongholds and fortified places of the said Lord King within his
kingdom of England. On trial two of these culprits had a good
delivery. John Beech and Samuel Swinfen were acquitted; but the
other eight culprits were found Guilty, and were sentenced to be
executed in the manner prescribed for the execution of felons convicted
of high treason. It is worthy of remark that Dr. Lingard was at fault
in writing of this affair as an incident of the autumn of 1665. The
date of the G. D. Roll in which the indictment of the conspirators was
filed, the date of the notes respecting the trial of the conspirators in the
G. D. Register, the date of the London Gazette (Ap. 23–26, 1666) containing a characteristic account of the trial at G. D. Session then being
held, and the Gaol Delivery Register's evidence that no prisoners were
tried during the plague at any G. D. Session at the Old Bailey from the
close of the session of 21 June, 17 Charles II., to the opening of the
session of 19 Feb., 18 Charles II. (to say nothing of other sources of
sure evidence), prove conclusively that Dr. Lingard was wrong in writing
of the eight convicted conspirators as having "paid the forfeit of their
lives" before 1st Sept., 1665. It is matter of certainty that the conspirators were not sentenced to death before the last week of April,
1666.

However much the horrors of the pestilence may have deadened
their sensibilities, it cannot be questioned that the Londoners were for
a moment deeply impressed by the fate of the eight conspirators who
were doomed to penal butchery in April, 18 Charles II. But the
impression was of no long duration. Eight months had not passed
since the execution of the conspirators, when Samuel Pepys wrote of
the ghastly business as an affair which most people had forgotten.
"W. Hewer dined with me," the diarist says under date of 13th Dec,
1666, "and showed me a Gazette, in April last, which I wonder should
never be remembered by any body, which tells how several persons
were then tried for their lives, and were found guilty of a design of
killing the king and destroying the Government; and as a means to it,
to burn the City; and that the day intended for the plot was the 3d. of
last September. And," adds the diarist, "the fire did indeed break on
2d. of September, which is very strange, methinks, and I shall remember it."

(2.) Arraignment of Rioters for High Treason in levying War against
Charles II. in St. Andrew's Holborn, St. James's Clerkenwell, St.
Leonard's Shoreditch, East Smithfield, and Poplar.—The trial of
John Rathbon, gentleman (whilom a Colonel in the army of the
Commonwealth, vide the Gazette of April 23–26, 1666), and his
comrades in the just noticed conspiracy was followed at an interval
of about one year and eleven months by serious rioting in the abovenamed parishes of Middlesex. The Middlesex records say little of the
grievances which occasioned this outbreak of popular passion, but from
the cries of 'Liberty of Conscience,' raised by some of the rioters, it
appears that the commotion was at least in some degree referable to
religious discontent.

That the riots, which agitated the inhabitants of the suburban
parishes and doubtless also the Londoners of the City for at least
three successive days, were grave and dangerous tumults is manifest.
They appear to have begun at Poplar on 23rd March, 20 Charles II.,
on which day one John Sharpies, late of the said parish, labourer,
showed himself (vide p. 8), and came forth with "a multitude of people,
to the number of five hundred persons, arrayed and armed in a warlike
manner, to wit, with iron barrs, poleaxes, long staves, and other weapons,"
and bore himself in such a way towards his fellow-rioters, that he was
placed some nine or ten days later in the dock at the Old Bailey, and
charged with having raised, ordered, and prepared war against his
Sovereign Lord the King. That the turbulent spirits of Poplar were
guilty of no enormities of violence may be inferred from the fact
that John Sharpies was declared 'Not Guilty' by the jurors on whom
he put himself, and the still more significant fact that no other man of
Poplar was called to account at the Old Bailey for his part in the
mutinous demonstration. On the morrow of the affair at Poplar, St.
Andrew's, Holborn (vide pp. 8, 9), was the scene of a more alarming
exhibition of popular feeling, though no more than some three hundred
people were concerned in the disturbance of the parish. Professing
to have come together for the purpose of pulling down houses of illfame, the three hundred marched under the command of Thomas
Lymericke, a sawyer, and pulled down the house of Peter Burlingham,
and took away from it goods and chattels to the value of thirty pounds.
Had the suburban rioters done nothing worse than this assault on
Master Burlingham's estate and feelings, it is conceivable that no one
of them would have been arraigned on a charge of high treason. But
the doings of the rioters at Clerkenwell, and Shoreditch, and East
Smithfield were far more reprehensible.

At St. James's, Clerkenwell, three hundred rioters assembled on the
Green, marched in warlike array to the New Prison, broke open the
doors of the prison, and liberated four prisoners, two of whom had
been committed to the gaol for felonies. The mob had succeeded in
rescuing these four malefactors, and were in a temper to commit even
graver excesses, when a troop of the King's horse-guards appeared on
the scene of commotion, under the command of Sir Philip Howard.
For awhile, instead of overawing the victors, this show of military force
only excited them to utter seditious menaces. Voices were heard to
exclaim, "We have been servants long enough; now we will be masters."
Other rioters cried aloud, "One dye all dye;" and whilst Edward Bedell,
a tailor of the parish, was being pursued by one of the king's soldiers,
he called out to those of the rioters who looked to him as their captain
to face about and come to his assistance.

After dispersing the mob on Clerkenwell Green, Sir Philip Howard
rode, with the soldiers of the Guard, to St. Leonard's, Shoreditch,
where he soon found himself in the presence of some four hundred
insurgents, who mistook him for the Duke of York, and under that
impression threw stones and treasonable threats at him. Declaring
that next May Day should be a bloody day, unless the King gave them
Liberty of Conscience, the rioters cried aloud "Kill the Guards," and
threatened to march on Whitehall, and raze it to the ground. Making
light of the soldiers, who numbered no more than two or three hundred,
the Shoreditch rebels vaunted their ability to knock every man of so contemptible a force on the head. All this occurred at St. Leonard's Shoreditch on 24th March. The next day, little disheartened by the ease
with which Sir Philip Howard's men had dispersed them on the previous
morning, the mutineers of the unruly suburbs reappeared in force, and
pulled a house to the ground.

At East Smithfield the rioters appeared in even greater strength than
the insurgents of the other parishes, overpowering the constables and
their aiders, pulling down several houses, and filling the orderly folk of
the district with alarm, on Tuesday the 24th, and Wednesday the 25th,
till the Guards had broken their courage and restored order to the
district. The chief leaders of the rout at East Smithfield were Richard
Bazeley, labourer, who went about with a naked sword in his hand;
Peter Messenger, labourer, who flourished over his head the "piece of
a greene apron on a staffe," that served as "the colours" of his particular company of peace-breakers, and Thomas Appletree, who was the
first to strike Constable Peverell. It was at East Smithfield that
Richard Bazeley distinguished himself by striking with his drawn sword
the young ensign who led the small body of the Guards, dispatched to
that particular quarter on the third and last day of the disturbance,—
a deed of warlike prowess for which the valorous Richard Bazeley paid
a heavy penalty a few days later.

It does not appear from anything in the Middlesex records that the
rioters exceeded 2,000 persons. According to the indictments and the
special verdicts with which four of the same bills (vide pp. 8, 9, 10, 11,
12) are endorsed, it appears that Poplar put upon the streets 500, St.
Andrew's Holborn, 300, St. James's Clerkenwell, 300, St. Leonard's
Shoreditch, 400, and East Smithfield 500 disturbers of the peace.
There is no evidence that these five bands, numbering in all two
thousand individuals set on mischief, were at any time massed in full
force on the same spot; but though they may not have assembled so as
to form one compact army, the five bands unquestionably came out by
common agreement and aided one another in their lawless proceedings.
It is particularly stated in one of the special verdicts (vide p. 11) that
Thomas Appletree, of East Smithfield, labourer, one of the busiest ringleaders of the insurgents of that quarter, was at Saffron Hill when the
mob demolished Master Burlingham's house, and, though there is no
direct evidence to the point, it may be assumed that he brought some
of his East Smithfield band with him to Saffron Hill.

Though some blood was shed, no life seems to have been taken by
the rioters, for the indictments, on which the ringleaders were arraigned
at the Old Bailey, say nothing of any slaughter done by the prisoners.
But though no one appears to have lost his life in the disturbances, the
seditious commotion was no trivial affair. To quell and disperse the
turbulent bands, the civil authorities had been constrained to ask for
the help of the King's Guards. The armed mob had pulled down
houses, broken into the New Prison, liberated prisoners, stoned Sir
Philip Howard under the impression that he was the King's brother,
struck troopers and constables, threatened to kill His Majesty's soldiers,
declared a purpose of levelling Whitehall Palace, and vowed to make
next May Day a bloody day unless the King hastened to grant his subjects Liberty of Conscience. Even at the present time, when lawabiding Londoners are so patient under displays of popular passion that
seem likely to result in popular defiance of the law, no person who
prefers civil order to civil confusion would hesitate to declare that an
armed multitude, acting in the thoroughfares of the capital as the five
bands of rioters acted in five suburban parishes of Charles the Second's
town, was a multitude which should be promptly suppressed. In these
days the chief actors in such a 'demonstration' would be punished with
imprisonment and penal labour. Charles II. and his advisers were of
opinion that sterner treatment was needful to teach the bolder spirits of
the populace in and about London to have due regard for the requirements and penalties of the law.

At the Session of Oyer and Terminer held at Hicks Hall in St.
John's Street, and the Session of Gaol Delivery held at the Justice Hall
in the Old Bailey, in the first week of April next following the suburban
disturbances, the ringleaders of the recent riots were dealt with as offenders who had levied war against their Sovereign Lord the King, and thereby incurred the penalties of high treason. On this grave charge Peter
Messenger, Richard Bazeley, William Greene, and Thomas Appletree, all
four late of East Smithfield, labourers; John Earle, William Wilkes,
William Forde, Richard Farrell, and Edward Cotton, all five late of St.
Leonard's Shoreditch, labourers; Edward Bedell, tailor, and Richard
Lattymer, labourer, both late of St. James's Clerkenwell; Richard
Woodward, labourer, Thomas Lymerick, sawyer, and John Richardson,
labourer, all three late of St. Andrew's Holborn; and John Sharpies,
late of Poplar, labourer, were all fifteen tried for their lives. Seven of
these men—to wit, John Earle, William Wilkes, William Forde, Richard
Farrell, Richard Woodward, John Richardson, and John Sharpies, were
found 'Not Guilty.' Against the other eight men—to wit, Peter Messenger, Richard Bazeley, William Greene, Thomas Appletree, Edward
Bedell, Richard Lattymer, Edward Cotton, and Thomas Lymerick—the
jurors returned special verdicts, leaving it to the Court to determine
whether the facts proved against the culprits amounted to the high
treason of raising and making war against the King. On deliberation,
the Court decided that Peter Messenger, Richard Bazeley, Edward
Cotton, and Thomas Lymerick had committed the treason, and
sentenced them to be put to death, &c., in the manner prescribed for
the execution of culprits convicted of high treason. In respect to
William Greene, Thomas Appletree, and Richard Lattymer, the Court
ordered that William Greene should be held in prison till he should put
in good sureties for his appearance at the next Gaol Delivery for Middlesex, and that Thomas Appletree and Richard Lattymer should be
held in prison without bail, upon the special verdicts for treason found
against them, because the Court wished to deliberate further on their
respective cases. Of the Court's decision in respect to Edward Bedell
no note appears either on the bill of indictment, endorsed with a special
verdict against him, or in the record of the Gaol Delivery Register.
Possibly he died in prison before judgment.

(3.) Treason of Abraham Goodman.—The ringleaders of the suburban
rioters having been dealt with in this manner in April, 20 Charles II.,
in the following December (vide pp. 12, 273) Abraham Goodman, late
of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, gentleman, was arraigned at the Old Bailey
on a charge of high treason, done by him at the said parish on the 11th
July of the same year, in speaking certain false and scandalous words
against the King and the Duke of Albemarle, to wit, in declaring in the
presence and hearing of divers of the King's lieges, 'that there was then
a great pestilence in the land because justice wasnot executed in the gates,'
and that 'he would remove them'—to wit, the said King and Duke—
'if he could get an opportunity of doing so,' and in further saying that
on the day before he 'was seeking an opportunity against the General,'
meaning by 'the General' the Duke of Albemarle. Found 'Guilty' by
a jury, Abraham Goodman, gent., was sentenced to be executed in the
manner prescribed for the execution of culprits convicted of high
treason.

(4.) Indictment of Alexander Burnett for High Treasons.—The
earliest of the indictments, preserved in the Middlesex records, temp.
Charles II., charging persons born in the King's dominions with high
treason, in being catholic priests guilty of traitorously being and remaining in the metropolitan county, when the law required them to keep out of
those dominions, is the bill (vide p. 55) found against Alexander Burnett,
late of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, for being a seminary priest ordained by
authority derived from the See of Rome, who traitorously was and
remained at the said parish on 1st August, 26 Charles II. An annotation on this bill shows that Alexander Burnett pleaded 'Not Guilty' to
it, and put himself on a jury of the country on 9th December of the
same year. On the same day Alexander Burnett pleaded 'Not Guilty'
to another indictment that, without speaking of him as having been
ordained a priest by authority derived from the See of Rome, charged
him with having, on the aforesaid 1st August, at the said parish,
'traitorously endeavoured and practised to withdraw divers of the King's
lieges to the Roman Religion, away from the religion established within
her dominions by Queen Elizabeth.' The Clerkenwell records tell us
nothing further of the proceedings on these indictments. Perhaps
Alexander Burnett died in gaol before he could be conveniently put on
trial.

(5.) Sufferers from Oates's Plot.—Readers who gave due consideration
to what I said in an earlier section of this preface, about the disappearance of several of the G. D. files of 30, 31, and 32 Charles II., and of
the condition of the extant G. D. files of those years, will learn without
surprise that the bills of indictment for high treason, on which several
of the sufferers from Oates's malicious inventions and perjuries were
proceeded against, have perished. Enquirers will search the Clerkenwell
records in vain for the indictment of uttering treasonable words against
the King, that in 1678 resulted in the conviction and execution of
William Staley, the Catholic banker, who whilst under sentence of death
was questioned respecting his cognizance of Oates's newly-broached
Popish plot. Search of the same records will be made in vain for the
indictment on which Mr. Edward Coleman, the Duchess of York's
secretary, was brought to trial at the Old Bailey on 28th November,
1678, at Oates's instigation, for designing to kill the King and change
the religion of the country. In the True Bill (vide pp. 215, 216) against
Benjamin Butler for writing and publishing a scandalous libel, entitled
This Seconde Parte of the Growth of Popery and Arbitrary Government,
appears this passage of words taken from the libel, and words of explanatory comment by the draughtsman of the indictment, to wit, "But
the Duke some way or other got this message sent to him to Newgate
to be of good chear, a way would be found to secure Sir Edmonbury
Godfrey well enough, and bid him" (vizt. Edward Coleman, then in
custody for divers treasons against the King) "not to be afraid, but rely
on him." Besides this reference to the Duchess of York's unfortunate
secretary, during my careful examination of the Middlesex records,
temp. Charles II., I also came on a much defaced Newgate Calendar, of
16 Oct., 30 Charles II. (vide pp. 90, 91) upon these consecutive and
partially defaced entries: (a.) 'Richard Langhorne, esq., Committed by
Lords of the Privy Council for High Treason, in compassing and
imagining the death of his sacred Majestie. Dated 7° October, 167 . .,'
and (b.) 'Edward Cole . . . ., Committed by Lords of the Privy Council
for High Treason in holding correspondence with forreigners, for the
destruction of the King and subversion of the Government . . . .' I
have little doubt that, if the entire surname were legible, it would be
found to be Coleman. On this point there is the less room for doubt,
because Edward Coleman was committed to prison about the same
time as Richard Langhorne, and because his letters to Père La Chaise,
containing projects and suggestions for furthering the interests and
enlarging the power of the Catholic Church, and bringing England
under her sway, were the least unsound part of the evidence upon which
he was sentenced to die the death of a traitor. But though I came once
and again upon a note relating to the dismal close of Edward Coleman's
career, I did not get view of the bill of indictment to which he pleaded
'Not Guilty' at the trial, which resulted in judgment that he should die
the death of a traitor.

After coming in the Newgate Calendar, 16th Oct., 30 Charles II.,
upon the record of the committal of Richard Langhorne, esq., to
Newgate Gaol, I came in the much defaced Newgate Calendar of the
next month (vide p. 96) on the commital of Richard Langhorne, junior,
to the same prison "for treason wherewith he is charged," and in the
still later Newgate Calendar of 15 Jan., 30 Charles II. (vide p. 120),
upon the names of Richard Langhorne and Richard Langhorne junior,
in the list of prisoners, ordered "to remain in Gaole without baile till
the next Gaole Delivery." But the indictment for high treason, which
the Catholic barrister was required to confess or traverse at his arraignment, did not come under my view. Like the indictment on which the
Duchess of York's secretary was tried, the indictment on which the
Catholic barrister was tried has perished.

Still, losses notwithstanding, the extant G. D, files, that came into
existence during the popish-plot mania, preserve a considerable
number of the indictments to which the sufferers from Oates's fanatical
villany pleaded 'Not Guilty.' In this preface the number and force of
these extant indictments will be most conveniently displayed in the
ensuing list of the Catholics—priests or laymen; but for the most part
priests—against whom the bills were preferred.

(a.) John Adlam alias Aylworth (vide p. 83), priest, indicted for being
a Catholic priest, who on . . . . March, 30 Charles II., traitorously was
and remained at St. Paul's, Covent Garden. Found 'Guilty,' on a
bill preserved in G. D. R., 11 Dec, 30 Charles II., he was sentenced to
be executed. In Missionary Priests, Bishop Challoner speaks of
Placidus Adelham or Adland, monk, O. S. B., as one who "was tried
and condemned at the Old Bailey merely as a priest, Jan. 17, 1679,
but was reprieved and died in prison." John Adlam alias Aylworth, and
Placidus Adelham alias Adland may have been the same person.

(b.) Lionell Anderson alias Munsoun, priest, indicted (vide 121,
122) for being a Catholic priest, who on 28 January, 30 Charles II.,
traitorously was and remained at St. Giles's-in-the-Fields. Found
'Guilty' on a bill preserved in G. D. R., 15 Jan., 31 Charles II, he
was sentenced to be executed. Speaking of this priest, as one who
entered the order of St. Dominick, Bishop Challoner observes in
Missionary Priests, "He was tried and condemned at the same time
and place as Mr. Corker, &c., but was pardoned by the King."

(c.) James Baker alias Hesketh, priest (vide 133), indicted on a bill
preserved in G. D. R., 26 Feb., 32 Charles II., for being a Catholic priest
who on 18th May, 31 Charles II., traitorously and as a false traitor was
and remained at St. Giles's-in-the-Fields, co. Midd. Found 'Guilty,' he
was sentenced to be executed. In the calendar the notice of the afore
named bill is followed immediately by a notice of another bill of indictment, preserved in G. D. R., 5 June, 31 Charles II., against Morrice
Gifford alias Morrice Baker, priest, for being a Catholic priest who on
19th May, 31 Charles II., traitorously returned from parts beyond sea
to St. Clement's Danes' and there in the said parish as a false traitor
was and remained; this last mentioned bill being annotated on its upper
margin with this note, to wit, 'Tr' p' nomen Jacobi Baker, xxii. Feb.,
xxxii. Car. Scdi R's' = He is tried under the name of James Baker
on 22 Feb., 32 Charles II. It seems, therefore, that Morrice Gifford
alias Baker, and James Baker alias Hesketh were the same person.
In Missionary Priests, Bishop Challoner says, 'I met with others, that
felt in like manner the fury of this persecution, as James Baker alias
Hesketh, priest, condemned at the Old Bailey, February 27, 1679–80.'

(d.) James Corker, priest and monk of the Abbey of Lambspring,
was proceeded against under two different indictments (vide pp. 84, 85,
and p. 91), being indicted in the first place for conspiring with Thomas
White alias Whitebread clk., John Fenwick clk. and others to kill the
King, overthrow the government, and change the religion of the country,
charges of which he was found 'Not Guilty,' and indicted in the second
place for being a Catholic priest who, on 24 Oct., 30 Charles II.,
traitorously and as a false traitor was and remained at St. Giles's-in-the
Fields, co. Midd., of which treason he was found 'Guilty,' and was
therefore, sentenced to be executed. Of this Father James Corker,
described in the two aforementioned indictments as "clerk," Bishop
Challoner says in Missionary Priests, "He was first tried for the plot, of
which he was accused by Oates and Bedloe, but acquitted by the jury;
then was tried as a priest, and condemned Jan. 17, 1679–80. He was
reprieved, and continued prisoner till King James's accession to the
throne . . . . . He was afterwards made abbot, first of Cismer, then of
Lambspring, which dignity he resigned, and ended his days at Paddington, near London."

(e.) Charles De La Rue Deffue, clerk, indicted under two indictments
(vide pp. 81, 82), for willingly hearing mass said and sung by a certain
Roman priest to the jurors unknown. By recognizances (vide p. 93),
dated 27 November, 30 Charles II., and preserved in S. P. R. of 9
December, 30 Charles II., Richard Wheeler, currier, Henry Duncombe,
tobacco-seller, his wife Martha Duncombe, and Christopher Hurt were
bound to give evidence at next S. P., against "John Worsley, a papist,
and Charles De La Rue Du Feu, a reputed priest, both being apprehended in Weld Streete since vii. of this instant Nov." The Newgate
Calendar of 15 Jan., 30 Charles II., shows (vide p. 120) that Charles
De La Rue de Feu was then a prisoner in Newgate Gaol.

(f.) John Fenwick, priest S. J., pleaded 'Not Guilty' to an indictment (preserved in G. D. R., 11 Dec, 30 Charles II.) charging him
(vide p. 85) with conspiring with Thomas White alias Whitebread
clerk, William Ireland clerk, and others, to destroy the King, overthrow
the government, and upset the religion by law established in England.
Pleading 'Not Guilty' to a similar indictment, preserved in G. D. R.,
5 June, 31 Charles II., the same John Fenwick (vide pp. 84, 85) was
found 'Guilty' of conspiring with Thomas White alias Whitebread,
and four other clerks named in the bill, and other false traitors to the
jurors unknown, to kill the King, overthow the government, and change
the religion of the country, and was sentenced to be executed, a
sentence that was carried into effect on 20th June, 1679, when he, and
four other Jesuit priests—to wit, Father Thomas Whitebread, Father
William Harcourt, Father John Gavan, and Father Anthony Turner—
were drawn on sledges from Newgate to Tyburn, and there put to
death. In Missionary Priests Bishop Challoner says that Father John
Fenwick was born of Protestant parents in the bishopric of Durham,
and that his "true name was Caldwell."

(g.) John Fleming, clerk, indicted for being a Catholic priest (vide
p. 133), who on 18th May, 31 Charles II., traitorously, and as a false
traitor was and remained at St. Martin's-in-the-Fields. On his trial at
Gaol Delivery of 16 July, 31 Charles II., he was found 'Not Guilty.'

(h.) John Gavan, priest S. J., but described merely as ' clerk ' in the
indictment (vide pp. 84, 85), which charged him with conspiring with
Thomas White alias Whitebread clerk, John Fenwicke clerk, William
Harcourt alias Harrison clerk, Anthony Turner clerk, and James
Corker clerk, to kill the King, overthrow the government, and change
the religion of England. Found 'Guilty,' he was executed at Tyburn
on 20th June, 1679. Father John Gavan's surname, it may be
remarked, was sometimes spelt and pronounced 'Gawen.'

(i.) John Grove, gentleman—so styled in the indictment (vide
pp. 85, 86) on which he was tried for high treason at the Old Bailey
in December, 1678, but described in Bishop Challoner's Missionary
Priests as "a Catholic layman, employed as a servant by the English
Jesuits in their affairs about town"—who was charged in the indictment
with conspiring, on 24th April, 30 Charles II., with Thomas White
alias Whitebread clerk, William Ireland clerk, John Fenwick clerk,
and Thomas Pickering clerk, and other traitors to the jurors unknown,
to kill the King, overthrow the government, and change the religion of
the country, and with undertaking, in conjunction with the said Thomas
Pickering, to slay and murder the said Lord the King, and yet further
with lying in wait, diabolically and traitorously, with the same Thomas
Pickering, on the said 24th April, and on divers subsequent days, to
slay and murder the same King. Found 'Guilty,' Mr. Grove was sentenced to be executed, and on 24th January, 30 Charles II., after two
reprieves (vide Bishop Challoner's Missionary Priests, p. 363) was drawn,
together with Father Ireland, from Newgate to Tyburn, and was there
executed.

(j.) William Harcourt alias Harrison, priest S. J., but merely styled
'clerk' in the bill (vide pp. 84, 85) on which he was indicted at the
Old Bailey, in June, 31 Charles II., for conspiring with Thomas
Whitebread clerk, John Fenwicke clerk, John Gavan clerk, Anthony
Turner clerk, and James Corker clerk, to kill the King, overthrow the
government, and change the religion of England. Found 'Guilty,'
he was executed at Tyburn on 20th June, 1679. In Missionary Priests
Bishop Challoner says: "Father William Harcourt alias Waring, whose
true name was Barrow, was a native of Lancashire."

(k.) William Ireland, priest—described as William Ireland, clerk,
in the indictment (vide pp. 85, 86) on which he was tried for high treason
at the Old Bailey in December, 1678, and described as William
Ireland alias Iremonger, priest S. J., in Bishop Challoner's Missionary
Priests, who was charged in the indictment with conspiring on
24th April, 30 Charles II., with Thomas White alias Whitebread
clerk, John Fenwick clerk, Thomas Pickering clerk, and John Grove
gentleman, to kill the King, overthrow the government, and change
the religion of England, and further with having co-operated with the
said Thomas White alias Whitebread and John Fenwick, and other
false traitors to the jurors unknown, "to persuade and encourage the
same [Thomas Pickering and John Grove] to slay and murder the said
Lord the King."Found 'Guilty,' Father Ireland was sentenced to
be executed. "On Friday the 24th of January," Bishop Challoner
says in Missionary Priests, "after two reprieves, father Ireland and
Mr. Grove were drawn from Newgate to Tyburn, abused all the way,
and pelted by the mob, whose insults they endured with a christian and
cheerful penitence."

(l.) David Joseph Keymish, priest, but styled 'clerk' in the bill,
preserved in G. D. R. 15 Jan., 31 Charles II., on which he was
charged at the Old Bailey (vide p. 92) with being a Catholic priest who,
on 15th November, 30 Charles II., traitorously was and remained in St.
Giles's-in-the-Fields. An annotation on this bill shows that David Joseph
traversed the indictment with a plea of 'Not Guilty,' but the parchment
exhibits no note touching any subsequent proceeding in the case. In
the same file with this bill appears another indictment, charging 'Daniel
(sic) Keymish, late of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields (sic), clerk,' with being
a Catholic priest who, on 15th November, 30 Charles II., traitorously
and as a false traitor was and remained. This last-described True
Bill exhibits no clerical note touching arraignment, or any subsequent
proceeding in the case. Speaking of David Joseph Keymish in Missionary Priests, Bishop Challoner says, "With these six last named
was arraigned also Mr. David Joseph Kemish, priest, but his trial was
put off by reason of his sickness. Whether he died in prison or survived I cannot learn."

(m.) Alexander Lumsden, priest, who by an indictment (pp. 132,
133) preserved in G. D. R., 15 Jan., 31 Charles II., which he
traversed with a plea of 'Not Guilty,' was charged with being a Catholic
priest, who on nth May, 31 Charles II., traitorously and as a false
traitor was and remained at St. Giles's-in-the-Fields. "He," Bishop
Challoner says of Mr. Alexander Lumsden in Missionary Priests, "was
a native of Aberdeen in Scotland, and a Dominican friar; was found to
be a priest, but being a Scotchman, the jury brought in the verdict
special, and he was not sentenced to die." As no special verdict
appears on the face or dorse of the bill I have first mentioned, and as
Bishop Challoner was a careful writer, whose accuracy is not to be
lightly questioned, I am disposed to think that Mr. Lumsden must
have been tried on another indictment.

(n.) Daniel Maccarty, priest, charged by an indictment (vide p. 108),
preserved in G. D. R., 26 Feb., 32 Charles II., with being a Catholic
priest, who on 30th Dec, 30 Charles II., traitorously and as a false
traitor was and remained at St. Giles's-in-the-Fields, co. Midd. Found
'Guilty' at G. D. of April, 32 Charles II., Danniel Maccarty (his
name is spelt Daniel Macharty in the G. D. Book) was sentenced to be
executed.

(o.) William Marshall (vide pp. 119, 120), priest, charged by an
indictment, preserved in G. D. R., 15 Jan., 31 Charles II., with being
a Catholic priest, who on 15 January, 30 Charles II., traitorously and as
a false traitor was and remained at St. Giles's-in-the-Fields. Found
'Guilty,' William Marshall was sentenced to be executed. A monk
of the Order of St. Bennet, in the Abbey of Lambspring, William Wall
alias Marsh alias Marshall, had been tried on an indictment charging
him with conspiring to kill the King, overthrow the government, and
change the religion of England, and acquitted, together with Sir George
Wakeman bart., William Rumley gent., and Father James Corker, at
the Gaol Delivery of Newgate held on 16th and divers following days
of July, 31 Charles II., before he was tried and condemned for being a
priest, &c, together with the same Father Corker, in the following
January. After sentence on the charge of traitorously being and remaining &c, William Marshall, says Bishop Challoner in Missionary Priests,
"was reprieved and survived the persecution."

(p.) John Naylor alias Carpenter, late of St. Giles's-in-the-Fields, co.
Midd., clerk (vide pp. 94, 95), tried at Gaol Delivery of Newgate in Feb.,
32 Charles II., on a bill charging him with being a Catholic priest, who
on 4 Dec, 30 Charles II. as a false traitor of the Lord now King was and
remained at the said parish. A bill preserved (vide p. 81) in G. D.
R., 11 Dec, 30 Charles II., shows that before his trial at the Old Bailey
in Feb., 32 Charles II., this Mr. John Naylor had been indicted under
the name of Francis Naylor, alias Carpenter, for being a Catholic priest,
who on 1st Jan., 29 Charles II., traitorously was and remained at the
same parish. That this sufferer from the agitation resulting from
Oates's spurious revelations and odious inventions was sent from the
Gatehouse prison to Newgate gaol in Dec, 1678, appears from the
following entry in the Newgate Calendar of 15th Jan., 30 Charles II.,
to wit, "John Naylor, alias Carpenter, from the Gatehouse, committed
by the Lord Privie-Seale, for remaining in London and being a priest,
contrary to the King's Proclamation. Dat. 4 Dec, 1678."

(q.) Charles Parris alias Parry, priest, described as "clerk" in the
indictment (vide p. 131), preserved in G. D. R., 15 Jan., 31 Charles II.,
on which he was tried at the Old Bailey, for being a Catholic priest who
on 3rd May, 31 Charles II., traitorously and as a false traitor was and
remained at St. Giles's-in-the-Fields, co. Midd. Found 'Guilty' he was
sentenced to be executed. "He was," says Bishop Challoner in Missionary Priests, "tried and condemned at the same time and place," to
wit, at the Old Bailey, on 17 January, 1679–80. "When he heard the
sentence he cried out, Te Deum Laudamus &c. Whether he died in
prison or survived the storm I have not learnt."

(r.) Thomas Pickering, described as 'clerk' in a True Bill, the
substance of which is given on pp. 85, 86, but described in Bishop
Challoner's Missionary Priests as a lay-brother of the Order of St.
Bennet, who was charged in the aforementioned indictment, preserved
in G. D. R., 11 December, 30 Charles II., with having conspired, on
24th April of 30 Charles II., with Thomas White alias Whitebread
clerk, William Ireland clerk, John Fenwicke clerk, and John Grove
gentleman, to kill the King, overthrow the government and change the
religion of England, and further with having especially undertaken in
conjunction with the said John Grove gentleman to slay and murder
the same king, and further with having ' laid in waite' with the same
John Grove gentleman to slay and murder their said sovereign. On
his trial at the Old Bailey court-house in December, 1678, Thomas
Pickering was found 'Guilty' upon this indictment, and was sentenced
to be executed. "Mr. Pickering," says Bishop Challoner in Missionary Priests, " was reprieved till the 9th of May, either in hopes of his
making discoveries or because the king was very unwilling to consent
to his death. But on the day aforesaid he was drawn to Tyburn
and there executed."

(s.) William Rumley described as a monk in Bishop Challoner's
Missionary Priests, v. ii., p. 392, but styled William Rumley, gentleman
(vide pp. 89, 90), in the indictment preserved in G. D. R., 5 June,
31 Charles II., charging him with conspiring on 30th August, 30
Charles II., with Sir George Wakeman, bart., and William Marshall,
gentleman (sic), to kill the King, subvert the government, and change
the religion of the country. William Rumley, on his trial at G. D. of
Newgate, 16 July, 31 Charles II., together with Sir George Wakeman,
Father William Marshall, and Father James Corker, was acquitted.

(t.) William Russell alias Nappier, priest (vide p. 141), tried on an
indictment, preserved in the G. D. R. 15 Jan., 31 Charles II., charging
him with being a Catholic priest, who, on 27 Nov., 31 Charles II., traitorously and as a false traitor was and remained at St. Giles's-in-the-Fields,
co. Midd. Found 'Guilty,' William Russell, alias Nappier, was sentenced
to be executed. In Missionary Priests Bishop Challoner says that
William Russell alias Nappier, was a native of Oxford and a father of
the holy order of St. Francis, and was called in religion Father Marianus.
Bishop Challoner further says that after he had been sentenced to death,
Father William Russell alias Nappier alias Marianus was "reprieved
and after a long imprisonment sent abroad, where he died in the Franciscan convent at Douay, in 1693, aged seventy-eight."

(u.) Henry Starkey, priest (vide p. 121), charged by an indictment,
preserved in the G. D. R. 15 Jan., 31 Charles II., with being a Catholic
priest, who, on 26th Jan., 30 Charles II., traitorously and as a false
traitor was and remained at St. Giles's-in-the-Fields. Found 'Guilty,'
Mr. Henry Starkey was sentenced to be executed, "but," says Bishop
Challoner, "he was reprieved."

(v.) Anthony Turner, priest S. J., tried at the Old Bailey on an
indictment (vide pp. 84, 85) charging him with conspiring with Thomas
Whitebread clerk, John Fenwicke clerk, William Harcourt clerk, John
Gavan clerk, and James Corker clerk, and divers other false traitors
to the jurors unknown, to kill the King, overthrow the government and
change the religion of England. Found 'Guilty,' Father Anthony
Turner, priest S. J., was executed at Tyburn, together with aforesaid
Father Thomas Whitebread, John Fenwicke, William Harcourt, and
John Gavan, priests S. J., on 20th June, 1679.

(w.) Edward Turner, late of St. Giles's-in-the-Fields, indicted for
being a Catholic priest, who, on 25 March, 31 Charles II., traitorously
and as a false traitor of the Lord the King was and remained at the said
parish. This is probably the same Edward Turner, priest, of whom
Bishop Challoner says, in Missionary Priests, that he was of the Society
of Jesus and "died in prison at London in 1681."

(x.) Thomas White alias Whitebread, priest S. J., tried at the Old
Bailey in June, 1679, upon an indictment (vide pp. 84, 85), preserved
in G. D. R. 5 June, 31 Charles II., charging him with conspiring
with John Fenwicke clerk, William Harcourt clerk, John Gavan clerk,
Anthony Turner clerk, and James Corker clerk, to kill the King, overthrow the government, and change the religion of England. Found
'Guilty,' Father Thomas Whitebread, S. J., was executed as aforesaid
at Tyburn on 20th June, 1679.

(y.) Sir George Wakeman, bart, tried at the Gaol Delivery of Newgate held at the Old Bailey on 16th and divers following days of July,
31 Charles II., upon an indictment, preserved in G. D. R., 5 June,
31 Charles II., charging him (vide pp. 89, 90) with having, on 30th
Aug., 30 Charles II., conspired with William Marshall, gentleman (sic),
and William Rumley, gentleman (sic), to kill the King and overthrow
the. government and change the religion of England, and further charging him with having on the same day especially taken upon himself to
slay and murder the same king, and yet further charging him with
having traitorously received a commission of Physician-General of the
army, about to be raised against the Lord the King, from an unknown
person, who pretended to be the Provincial of the Society commonly
called the Society of Jesus, and to have authority from the See of Rome
to grant a commission in that respect. On his trial Sir George Wakeman
bart., the Queen's physician, was found 'Not Guilty.'

To the foregoing list of persons who during the Popish plot mania
were arraigned and tried for high treason done in Middlesex, at the Old
Bailey court-house, on indictments still preserved at Clerkenwell, I may
add the name of

(z.) John Morgan, priest, who was arraigned (vide p. 279) and tried at
the Gaol Delivery held at the Old Bailey on 30th April, 31 Charles II.,
and divers following days, upon an indictment that has perished—an
indictment that charged him with being a priest ordained by authority
derived from the See of Rome, who, on some day specified in the lost
bill traitorously and as a false traitor of the Lord the King was and
remained at some parish of Middlesex. Found 'Guilty,' John Morgan
was sentenced to be executed.

This list of persons who suffered in life or liberty in Middlesex from
the mania of the so called 'popish plot,' that was devised and stimulated by Oates's fanatical villany, may of course be greatly extended
by the reader, who brings to the study of the ensuing calendar a wide
and accurate knowledge of the individuals, who were denounced and
harassed as participators in the unreal conspiracy. Students will, of
course, bear in mind that the Clerkenwell records comprise no indictments, or other evidences of treasons, or other felonies done within the
City, which as a county by itself is no part of the county of Middlesex.

VI. Weavers' Riots in Middlesex temp. 27 Charles II.—Some seven
years and four months after the suburban riots of 20 Charles II., which
resulted in several trials and at least four executions for the high treason
of levying war against the King, Middlesex was agitated by another
series of riots which, although they were less heinous in their character
and stirred the passion of smaller multitudes, are much more interesting and deserving of attention than the earlier disturbances. Arising
out of the introduction from Holland into England of the ribbon-loom,
styled by turns the "weavers' loom-engine" and the "Dutch loomengine," these destructive tumults of Charles the Second's 27th regnal
year originated in irritations and were fruitful of incidents that will
remind the reader of the much later and far more mischievous riots,
raised by the Luddites at Nottingham, Derby, and various places of
England's northern counties in the second decade of the present century.

(1.) Origin of the Dutch Loom-Engine.—No labour-saving machine,
to be rated with comparatively modern inventions, has a more uncertain and doubtful origin than the ribbon-loom, whose arrival in
England occasioned lively tumults in the metropolitan county some
three years before Titus Oates became notorious. It is a question
whether the machine came into existence towards the close of the 16th
or some early year the 17th century. There may have been an example
of the ingenious contrivance at Dantzic in 1579, and there is reason to
think there was another example of the invention at Leyden about the
year 1621. The credit or the discredit of producing the novel engine
has been assigned to three different regions of the earth,—to Switzerland, Germany, the Netherlands. It seems more probable that the
curious will eventually discover the real Junius than that they will bring
to historic light the mechanician who constructed the first loomengine. If Anthony Moller may be credited, the actual inventor of the
mechanical arrangement was a Dantzicker whose ingenuity was rewarded
by the Council of the city, in a manner that was not calculated to encourage impostors to assert their superior claims to the honour of having
invented the novel engine. Instead of thinking well of the machine
and its author, the Council regarded the invention as a device for
reducing countless workmen to beggary, and regarded its maker as an
enemy of the human species. Denouncing the loom-engine as a wicked
contrivance, the authorities forbade the inventor to use it for his
advantage. Yet further to guard against the consequences of so
dangerous a person's disobedience, they caused him "to be privately
strangled or drowned." For a time the rulers and governments concurred in regarding the engine-loom with suspicion and hostility. Even
the States General, the first power to recognize the utility of the loomengine, and to permit its employment, limited the use of the dangerous
machine with stringent conditions. This cold and jealous patronage of
the new method of weaving caused the engine-loom to be styled Dutch.

In his remarks on these labour-saving machines, John Beckmann
says in the History of Inventions and Discoveries, "In 1676 the ribbon
loom was prohibited at Cologne, and the same year some disturbance
took place in consequence of its being introduced into England.
It is probable that Anderson alludes to this loom when he says,
speaking of the above year, 'As was also brought from Holland to
London the weavers' loom-engine, then called the Dutch loom-engine.'
He, however, praises the machine without describing it; nor does he
mention that it occasioned any commotion.'" Putting it beyond
question that the introduction of the loom was fruitful of commotion,
the Middlesex records also make it manifest that the engine-loom
occasioned riots in England a year sooner than the time to which the
German Professor assigned the disturbance.

On 8th August, 27 Charles 11., i.e., 1675, recognizances were taken
(vide pp. 60, 61) before Charles Pitfeild, esq., J.P., of Thomas Hall of
St. Botolph's-without-Bishopsgate, and John Pierce of St. Leonard's
Shoreditch, silk weavers, in the sum of forty pounds each and of
Robert Briggs of St. Leonard's Shoreditch, silk weaver, in the' sum of
one hundred pounds, for the appearance of the same Robert Briggs at
the next Session of the Peace for Middlesex, to answer "to what shall
be objected against him by William Crouch, Thomas Barker and
others, who charge and accuse him of combining, plotting, and contriving, with other silk weavers, to enter divers men's houses, there to
breake down and destroy their Engine Loomes." As I know nothing of
the details of the Middlesex Weavers' riots, temp. 27 Charles II., apart
from such knowledge as has come to me from the Clerkenwell records,
and as those fragmentary records comprise no earlier manuscript touching those riots than this bill of recognizances, I cannot say that
rioting had actually begun amongst the Middlesex weavers on the 8th
of August.

(1.) Weavers' Riots on 9th August, 1675.—Extant indictments (vide
pp. 61, 62) afford conclusive evidence that on 9th August, 1675, some
of the Middlesex weavers assembled tumultuously in Stepney, broke
into several houses of that parish, and destroyed engine weaving looms
taken by them from the same houses.

(a.) Forcible and Riotous Entry into John Hascor's House.—At the
Newgate Gaol Delivery held at the Old Bailey on 9th Sept., 27
Charles II., and on divers ensuing days, William Piercey, late of
Stepney, labourer, was indicted for having, together with some forty
other disturbers of the peace, broken on the 9th of August last past into
John Hascor's house at Stepney, taken unlawfully from the same house
'an Engine Weaving Loome,' worth six pounds of the goods and
chattels of the said John Hascor, placed the same engine loom in the
highway, and then and there set fire to it and destroyed it. John
Hascor having pleaded 'Not Guilty' to this indictment, the Court
decided to deliberate on the matter. It seems that no further proceedings were taken on this indictment against William Piercey.

(b.) Forcible and Riotous Entry into John King's House.—At the
same Gaol Delivery of 9th Sept., 27 Charles II., the same William
Piercey was arraigned and tried on another indictment for having,
together with some hundred other disturbers of the peace, broken on
the same 9th of August last past into the dwellinghouse of John King
at Stepney, taken unlawfully from the same house five "machines called
'Engine-Weaving Loomes' worth thirty pounds, and two ounces of silke
worth five shillings, and two joynt-stooles worth three shillings, and a
pair of 'Rices to wind silke on' worth four shillings, and 'unam rotam
Harpedon anglice vocatam a winding wheel' worth seven shillings and a
matted chair worth twelve pence, of the goods and chattels of the said
John King," placed the aforesaid engine-looms, silk, rices, windingwheel and matting in the highway, and then and there set fire to them
and destroyed them. It is stated in the indictment that the tumult of
this affair lasted for an hour. Found 'Guilty,' William Piercey was
fined five hundred marks, and committed to prison, there to remain till
he should have paid the fine, and was also pilloried on three several days
—one day on the pillory in Holborn near Chancery Lane, the second
day on the pillory in the Strand near the Maypole, and the third day
on the pillory in St. John's Street, near the Bars.

(2.) Weavers' Riots on 10th August, 1675.—The riots of 9th August
at Stepney were followed on the next day (vide pp. 62, 63, 64) by three
several riotous outrages, two of them being committed at St. Leonard's
Shoreditch, and one at Whitechapel.

(a.) Forcible and Riotous Entry into James Moore's House at St.
Leonard's, Shoreditch.—At the Newgate Gaol Delivery held in September, 27 Charles II., nine persons—to wit, John Layton labourer, Samuel
Walters yeoman, Arthur West labourer, Robert Stockley labourer,
Thomas Barnes yeoman, William Nicholls yeoman, Sara Hill wife of
Robert Hill labourer, Joan Browne wife of William Browne labourer,
and Jane Utherston wife of Thomas Utherston yeoman, all nine late of
St. Leonard's, Shoreditch—were indicted for having on 10th August
last past, together with some hundred other disturbers of the peace,
broken into the dwellinghouse of James Moore, at St. Leonard's,
Shoreditch, taken unlawfully therefrom "four wooden machines called
'Engine Weaving Loomes,' worth thirty pounds, of the goods and
chattels of the same James Moore," placed the same looms in the highway, and then and there set fire to them and utterly destroyed them.
The tumult of this affair lasted for four hours. With the exception of
Robert Stockley's name, no clerical annotation appears on the indictment over the names of the culprits. The verdict against and sentence
upon Robert Stockley are however fully recorded. Found 'Guilty,' he
was fined five hundred marks, committed to prison, there to remain till
he should have paid the fine, and sentenced to stand on the pillory on
three several days—one day on the pillory in Holborn, the second day
on the pillory in the Strand near the Maypole, and the third day on the
pillory in St. John's Street near the Bars.

(b.) Forcible and Riotous Entry into William Crouch's House at St.
Leonard's Shoreditch.—At the same Gaol Delivery of Newgate, held in
September, 27 Charles II., the aforementioned Robert Stockley, of St.
Leonard's, Shoreditch, labourer, was also indicted and tried for having
on the 10th August last past, together with some one hundred other
disturbers of the peace, broken into the dwellinghouse of William
Crouch, of St. Leonard's, Shoreditch, taken from the same house "duas
functiones ligneorum instrumentorum textrium anglice vocatas 'wooden
frames of weaving-loomes' worth four pounds," of the goods and
chattels of the said William Crouch, placed the same frames in the
highway, and then and there maliciously set fire to them and destroyed
them. The tumult of this affair lasted for half an hour. Robert
Stockley was found 'Guilty' on this indictment, but as he had already
been convicted of a similar offence on another bill, the Court determined to take counsel on the matter.

(c.) Forcible and Riotous Entry into the House of Robert Bowes at
Whitechapel.—At the same Gaol Delivery of Newgate, held in September, 27 Charles II., Digby Miller, late of Whitechapel, labourer, was
indicted and tried for having on the aforesaid 10th August last past, in
the company of some two hundred other disturbers of the peace, broken
into the dwellinghouse of Robert Bowes at Whitechapel, taken unlawfully therefrom "ten wooden machines called 'Engine Weaving
Loomes,' worth one hundred and twenty pounds, and four ounces of
silke worth twelve shillings," of the goods and chattels of the said
Robert Bowes, and carried the same looms and silk to Stepney, and
there placed them in the highway and set fire to them and totally
destroyed them. The tumult of this affair lasted for an hour and a
half. Found 'Guilty,' Digby Miller was fined five hundred marks,
committed to prison, there to remain until he should have paid the fine,
and was sentenced to stand on the pillory on three several days—one
day on the pillory in Holborn near Chancery Lane, the second day on
the pillory in the Strand near the Maypole, the third day on the pillory
in St. John's Street near the Bars.

(d.) Punishment of another Culprit for his part in the forcible and
riotous Entry into the House of Robert Bowes.—Convicted at the Newgate
Gaol Delivery, held at the Old Bailey in September, 27 Charles II., of
having on 10th August last past broken into the dwellinghouse of
Robert Bowes at Whitechapel, and of having offered other outrages to
the same Robert Bowes, Michael Snell, late of Whitechapel, yeoman,
was fined five hundred marks, was committed to prison, there to remain
till he should have paid the same fine, and was also sentenced to stand
on the pillory on the three several days—one day on the pillory in
Holborn near Chancery Lane, the second day on the pillory in the
Strand near the Maypole, and the third day on the pillory in St. John's
Street near the Bars.

(e.) Indictment of Serjeant Humphreys for forbearing to do his best to
suppress the Riot on 10th August, on the Occasion of the Forcible Entry
into William Crouch's House.—By this indictment (vide p. 62) it was
charged against Richard Humphreys that he, "being one of the
serjeants under the command of Sir Thomas Byde knt., Captayne of
one of the trayned bands for Middlesex, then appointed for the suppression of the tumult &c. forbore to suppress the same tumult and
apprehend rioters taking part in it. An annotation on this indictment
certifies that process upon it was stayed by the order of the Attorney
General.

(f.) Indictment of Ensign William Tindall for Misconduct at the same
Riot.—Together with the indictment against Serjeant Humphreys, the
G. D. R., 9 Sept., 27 Charles II., preserves another bill that, giving
readers a glimpse of another of the Middlesex trained bands on duty at a
riot, will help them to realize the stir and scenic effect of the commotion, which two companies at least of those bands were appointed to
put down. From this indictment it appears that Thomas Cusden,
gentleman, and captain of one of the trained bands for the metropolitan
county, being then and there present with his company of soldiers for
the suppression of the tumult, himself apprehended a rioter whom he
committed to the custody of Ensign William Tindall. The charge against
the Ensign was that, after receiving his Captain's prisoner, he allowed the
rioter to escape, instead of carrying the fellow before a Justice of the
Peace; and on that charge Ensign William Tindall was tried at the
Gaol Delivery by a jury, who found him 'Not Guilty.'

(3.) Weavers' Riots on 11th August, 1675.—Through the defective
and fragmentary condition of, the Middlesex records I am no more
able to say whether the riots came to an end on the 11th than I am
able to give precisely the day on which overt rioting began. The records,
however, afford sure evidence that rioting was renewed on the 11th
at three suburban parishes.

(a.) Forcible and Riotous Entry into the Dwellinghouse of William
Hodgson, at St. James's Clerkenwell.—At the Newgate Gaol Delivery
held in September, 27 Charles II., Joseph Fryer alias Wood and
Edward Bruncker, both late of St. James's Clerkenwell, labourers, were
arraigned and tried on a True Bill found against them for breaking on
11th August last past, together with some hundred other disturbers of
the peace into the dwellinghouse of William Hodgson at the aforesaid
parish, and unlawfully taking from the same house "three machines
called' engine Weaving Looms,' of the goods and chattels of the said
William Hodgson," and placing the same looms in the highway, and
then and there setting fire to them and utterly destroying them. The
tumult of this affair lasted for an hour. Found 'Guilty,' Edward
Bruncker was fined twenty marks, and was committed to prison there
to remain till he should have paid the fine. Joseph Fryer alias Wood
was fined five hundred marks, was committed to prison there to remain
till he should have paid the fine, and was further sentenced to stand on
the pillory on three several days.

(b.) Forcible and Riotous Entry into the Dwellinghouse of Thomas
Rowe at Hoxton.—At the Newgate Gaol Delivery held at the Old
Bailey in September, 27 Charles II., John Heberd late of Hoxton
labourer was indicted and tried for breaking, on 11th August last past,
together with some hundred disorderly persons, into the dwellinghouse
of Thomas Rowe at Hoxton, and carrying away from the same house a
certain machine called 'an Engine Weaving Loome,' worth six pounds
and twelve shillings, of the goods and chattels of one Nicholas Constable, placing the said engine loome in the highway, and then and
there setting fire to it and destroying it. The tumult of this affair
lasted for an hour. Found 'Guilty,' John Heberd was fined five
hundred marks, committed to prison there to remain till he should
have paid the fine, and was pilloried on three several days—on the first
day on the pillory at Holborn near Chancery Lane, on the second day
on the pillory in the Strand near the Maypole, and on the third day on
the pillory in St. John's Street near the Bars.

(c.) Forcible and Riotous Entry into, the Dwellinghouse of George
Harrison at Stepney.—At the Gaol Delivery held at the Old Bailey in
September, 27 Charles II., John Serjeant and Richard Maynard, both
late of Stepney yeomen, were arraigned and tried on an indictment,
charging them with having on 11th August last past, in the company of
some thirty other disturbers of the peace, unlawfully broken into the
house of George Harrison at Stepney, carried off from the said house
ten wooden instruments called 'Weavers' Batternes' worth forty pounds,
of the goods and chattels of a certain Robert Bowes, placed them on
the highway, and then and there unlawfully set fire to them and totally
destroyed them. Richard Maynard was acquitted. Found 'Guilty,'
John Serjeant was fined five hundred marks and committed to prison
there to remain till he should have paid the fine, and was also sentenced
to stand on the pillory on three several days.

VII. Gentle Folk of Middlesex temp. Charles II. and James II.—
As the records of a Criminal Court are not a kind of evidences in which
students might be hopeful of coming upon memorials of the finer and
more generous traits of human nature, it is needless to say that the
ensuing calendar will not dispose its searchers to think more highly
than heretofore of the gentle folk of England under our last two Stuart
kings. But amongst entries that afford glimpses of what was least
agreeable and praiseworthy in the superior classes of English society,
from 19 Charles II. to 4 James II., the careful reader of this volume
will find some curious pieces of testimony touching individuals of those
classes, that are discreditable neither to the individuals nor to their
historic period. It will be seen from these pieces of testimony how in
the struggle for subsistence, which seems to have been even keener in
Restoration London than in Victorian London, persons of gentle
parentage and fair social credit were glad to earn their living by avocations that are now-a-days regarded as unsuitable for persons of 'quality'
and 'condition.'

(1.) Employments of Gentle Folk of good Name and Credit.—At the
present time, when countless gentlewomen of good birth and high
education are sustaining themselves as teachers, artists, medical practitioners, legal practitioners, government clerks, private secretaries,
journalists, tradeswomen, hospital nurses, without losing aught of their
ancestral dignity, and when social sentiment declares gentlewomen have
no cause to blush for being their own bread-winners in any lawful and
congenial pursuit, a lady of title—say the widow of an eminent officer of
the army or navy—would think twice and for the third time before she
accepted the position of keeper of a county gaol. Possibly Mary Lady
Broughton had some nervous trouble about her personal dignity and
what the world would think of her action, before she took the step that
causes me to mention her in the present page.

(a.) Mary Lady Broughton, widow, Keeper of the Gatehouse Prison.—
Whether it cost her a painful effort to turn gaoler, or whether she
accepted the gaoler's office with a light heart, it is certain that Mary
Lady Broughton, temp. Charles II, was Keeper of the King's Prison of
the Gatehouse in St. Margaret's, Westminster, and that during her
tenure of the lucrative and unsavoury office she was personally accountable for the safe custody of the prisoners. When Thomas Ridley,
prisoner committed to her custody on a charge of larceny, slipt from the
Gatehouse and made flight, Mary Lady Broughton (vide p. 21) was
indicted for having "wittingly and wilfully suffered one Thomas Ridley,
duly committed to the said prison and her custody on a charge of stealing a silver cup worth twenty-five shillings, to escape from the same
prison of the Gatehouse, of which she was Keeper, and to go at large."
Though the Grand Jury, at Hickes Hall, found the indictment a True
Bill, it does not appear from any note on the parchment that the lady
gaoler was brought to trial, or was ever required to confess or plead
to the indictment. In charity and courtesy, therefore, readers may
assume that Mary Lady Broughton was not seriously to blame.

(b.) Gentle Chief Scavengers of St. Giles's-in-the-Fields and St. Martin'sin-the-Fields, co. Midd.—Whilst Lady Broughton was Keeper of the
Gatehouse Prison, the office of Raker or General Undertaker for
cleansing the streets, lanes, and other open passages of St. Giles's-inthe-Fields and St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, was occupied by Winsor
Sandys, esq., a gentleman who in being an esquire, at a time when no
man lightly adopted or lightly accorded the title of dignity, was a gentleman of distinctly greater consideration than any male person who was
a mere gentleman entitled to bear arms. Obtaining this office in the
first instance for a term of years from the Commissioners of Scotland
Yard, acting in pursuance of an Act of Parliament of 13 and 14
Charles II., by a deed poll, some particulars of which appear in the
body of this volume (vide pp. 157, 158, 159), Winsor Sandys, esq.,
threw himself with spirit into his enterprise, investing money in horses,
carts, rakes, brushes, scuppets, and other implements, putting at convenient points of the two parishes a sufficient number of laystalls for the
reception of dust and other rubbish, and bringing together a competent
body of scavengers and carters, whom he ordered and governed with dustmanlike ability. Probably the chief dustman's business was the most
lucrative dustman's business in the suburbs of London. To form an
adequate notion of Mr. Winsor Sandys's financial success, readers must
bear in mind that whilst receiving salaries raised by rate from the
inhabitants of the district for cleaning the thoroughfares and carrying
away the dirt, the supreme scavenger was largely employed by householders to empty their cesspools. Mr. Sandys may be conceived to have
done well for himself from a pecuniary point of view. Still his business
was a vocation that a gentleman of position would not care to follow
in Victorian London, however needful it may be for the welfare of
society. The evidence is certain, that Winsor Sandys, esq., discharged
the functions of his office to the satisfaction of the vestries of both
parishes till he went to a world that is generally believed to require no
scavengers. On his death Winsor Sandys, esq., was succeeded in his
office and his business-plant by his widow, Mrs. Sandys.

(c.) The Lady Chief Scavenger of St. Giles's-in-the-Fields and St.
Martin's-in-the-Fields.—It does not appear precisely, from the evidences
at Clerkenwell, how long Mrs. Sandys remained in the business which
her husband carried on for a considerable term of years with so much
vigour and address. Though she enjoyed the good-will of the vestries,
it is not surprising that soon after her husband's death she began to
look out for a proper gentleman, to whom she might transfer her office,
with the sanction of the vestries, and her trade-plant on reasonable
terms. The first person' whom she offered to introduce to her office
was a military gentleman, styled Captain Whitcombe, who appears to
have been crafty and over-reaching,—ready enough to turn scavenger,
but desirous of getting Mrs. Sandys's horses, carts, and implements for
little more than a song. Failing to come to terms with Captain Whitcombe, Madam Winsor Sandys entered into negociations with Thomas
Rowe, esq., who purchased the widow's interest in the offices of Raker
and General Undertaker, buying her horses, carts, and implements for
a thousand pounds. After entering on the enjoyment of the place, the
new Chief Scavenger laid out another thousand pounds on the undertaking. But he had no sooner got fairly to work when he was disturbed
in the enjoyment of his office, and hindered in the performance of his
official duties by Captain Whitcombe, who, starting as an interloper in
opposition to the new Chief Raker, did his best to deprive him of the
emoluments of his appointment. "If," the Captain had been heard
to say, " I can but difficult Mr. Rowe in his employment, I will buy
all the horses and cartes and other things I have occasion for at my
owne price." From p. 159 readers may learn by what means Captain
Whitcombe strove to break Mr. Rowe, acquire his plant for a trifle,
and oust him from the place for which he had paid a fair price to Madam
Sandys. So keen was the competition between two gentlemen of
Charles the Second's time for the place of Master Scavenger and
Nightman to the inhabitants of St. Giles's-in-the-Fields and St. Martin'sin-the-Fields.

(2.) Gentle Felons and Misdemeanants, temp. Charles II. and
James II.—In their heinous offences, crimes, and minor malfeasances,
the criminous and disorderly gentlemen of Charles the Second's
Middlesex resembled the gentlemen who, in earlier times of the seventeenth century, or in the spacious times of Elizabeth, came within the
grip of the criminal law. Committing murder and manslaughter, they
went upon the road in order to replenish their pockets with the money
of luckless wayfarers. Sometimes a gentle thief condescended to pick
a loiterer's pocket in a suburban street, or carried off articles of plate
from a friend's supper-table. Most of the manslaughters, for which
these disorderly gentlemen pleaded their clergy, and some of the murders for which they were arraigned at the Old Bailey, were done in the
way of duelling or in the heat of festive broils, and as mere incidents of
honourable warfare did not lower them in the world's regard. For
example, no modish person thought the worse of Sir Thomas Halford,
bart. (vide pp. 7, 8), because he had been tried for the murder and
convicted of the manslaughter of Edmund Temple, esq., whom he
killed by striking him on the head with a glass bottle in a sudden fit of
anger. But some of the murders done by English gentlemen in the
days of the merry Charles Stuart were murders of an especially odious
kind. For example, extenuating circumstances seem to have been
conspicuously absent from

(a.) Mr. Robert Ridgley's Murder of Mr. George Dale.—From an
indictment (vide p. 7) preserved in G. D. R. 17 Feb., 20 Charles II.,
it appears that when he murdered George Dale, gentleman, at St.
Pancras, on 21 Oct., 17 Charles II., by giving him with a rapier a
wound of which he died on the same day, Robert Ridgeley, late of the
said parish, co. Midd., gentleman, perpetrated the crime at the instigation of Beatrice Dale, the wife of the said George Dale, gentleman.
Her husband having been thus sent out of this life, Beatrice married his
murderer. Two years and three or four months later, Robert Ridgeley,
gentleman, and his wife Beatrice Ridgeley, were tried at the Old Bailey
on an indictment, which charged him with murdering George Dale,
and charged her with procuring the same Robert to murder her said
then husband, with aiding him to commit the murder, and also
with receiving and harbouring the same Robert Ridgeley on the
aforesaid 21st October, 17 Charles II., whom she knew to have murdered her husband. Found ' Guilty,' Robert and Beatrice Ridgeley
were sentenced to be hanged.

(b.) Barbarous Assault committed on John Arnold, esq., J.P., by John
Gyles, gentleman.—On 15 April, 32 Charles II., at St. Dunstan's-in-theWest, co. Midd. (vide p. 144), John Gyles late of the said parish gentleman lay in wait with divers unknown confederates for John Arnold,
esq., J.P. for co. Monmouth, and with swords, &c, assaulted and
wounded the same Justice Arnold, giving him at a point between his
belly and left breast a wound from which blood flowed, and two wounds
on his breast and two other wounds on his left arm. Tried at the Old
Bailey in July, 32 Charles II., for thus lying-in-wait for and assaulting
his adversary, John Gyles, gentleman was sentenced to stand for an
hour on the pillory on three several days; one day on the pillory near
Chancery Lane, the second day on the pillory in Holborn near Gray's
Inn Court, and the third day on the pillory in the Strand near the
Maypole, with a paper on his head setting forth his offence in these
words, to wit, " For assaulting by lyinge in waite and grievously wounding John Arnold, esq., a Justice of Peace of Monmouthshire." John
Gyles, gentlemen, was further sentenced to pay a fine of fifty shillings,
and to remain in prison until he should put in good sureties for his
good conduct during the rest of his life.

(c.) A Gentlewoman convicted of Larceny.—Six years and a few
months after Beatrice Ridgeley's conviction and sentence, Apollonia
Scroope (vide p. 54), wife of Jarvas Scroope, of St. Margaret's Westminster, gentleman, took her trial at the Old Bailey, and was convicted
by a jury of having on the nth June, 26 Charles II., stolen at the said
parish and carried off a silver pottinger worth thirty shillings, a silver
plate worth twenty shillings, a silver cawdle cup worth forty shillings, and
a silver tankard worth eight pounds, of the goods and chattels of Nicholas
Brady, gentleman. Though it exhibits a note of her conviction, the
True Bill on which Apollonia Scroope was tried for stealing plate to
the value of twelve pounds ten shillings, about sixty-two pounds in
Victorian England, exhibits no annotation touching judgment. Instead
of proceeding to pass sentence on the lady, the Court decided to
deliberate on her case till the next Gaol Delivery.

(d.) The Assault committed by James Dore, gentleman, on Jane
Weddall, the wife of John Weddall, esq.—James II. was in his first
regnal year, when James Dore, of St. Dunstan's-in-the-West, gentleman
(vide p. 299), on the 16th day of December in that year, wickedly and
inhumanly assaulted the aforesaid lady with a sword in Chancery Lane,
and then and there beat, wounded, kicked, and bruised her, so that
her life was despaired of. Arraigned at a special Session of Oyer and
Terminer held on the 19th day of the same month, James Dore confessed the indictment, whereupon he was sentenced to pay a fine of one
hundred marks, to stand on the next Thursday for an hour upon the
pillory near the Globe Tavern in Chancery Lane, with a paper showing
his offence upon his head, and after standing on the pillory to remain in
Newgate Gaol, until he should have paid the fine.

(e.) Two Gentlemen charged with cosening and cheating a countryman
at Cards in Lincoln's Inn Fields.—In the days of Charles the Second's
23d regnal year, when Stephen Hobson kept an unlawful game (vide p.
31) "called the Indion Game" in Lincolnes Inn Fields, and Edward
Forster used to haunt "a certaine lottery called 'The Wheele of
Fortune'" in the same Fields, the great square on the west of Lincoln's
Inn Gardens was alike attractive to sight-seers from the provinces and to
card-sharpers on the look-out for simpletons to despoil. Two sets of
recognizances (vide 32, 33) preserved in S. P. R., 4 December, 23
Charles II., show how two needy and unscrupulous gentlemen on
15th of November drew into their toils a rustic whom they doubtless
hoped to relieve of more money than he yielded to their craft. Coming
upon ' one John Sampson, a countryman,' in Lincoln's Inn Fields, John
Hewson of St. Andrew's Holborn, gentleman, and Francis Winn, of
St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, gentleman, accosted him in terms of goodfellowship, as each of them threw a five-shillings piece on the ground to
show that money was plentiful with them. ' Come,' cried each gentleman airily as he tossed his silver crown upon the ground, ' and take a
share of what we have found.' Accepting the invitation, the countryman took a hand of the cards which the two gentlemen were quick to
produce. When the countryman had lost twelve shillings to each of the
two gentle sharpers, the game came to an end—possibly because a constable came on the players, in time to save simple John Sampson from
heavier losses. Taken before Sir Thomas Byde, knt., J.P., John
Hewson, gentleman, and Francis Wynn, gentleman, were put in bonds
to appear at the next Session of the Peace for Middlesex to answer for
cheating the simpleton from the country, and also for being 'idle,
loose, and disorderly persons,' who could not give a good and honest
account of their livelihood.

(f.) Another Disorderly Gentleman.—Just sixteen months before Sir
Thomas Byde, knt., J.P, came to an opinion that John Hewson,
gentleman, and Francis Winn, gentleman, were 'idle, loose, and
disorderly persons,' Stephen Scudamore, of Welclose in Whitechapel,
gentleman (vide p. 19), was bound before Josiah Ricroft, esq., J.P., in
the sum of forty pounds (with three sureties in the sum of twenty
pounds each), to appear at the next Session of the Peace for Middlesex,
then and there to answer "for being a lewd person, and for keeping a
certaine booth for dancing on the ropes and other unlawful exercises in
Welclose, whereon he is an actor with other lewd persons his servants,
who use much obscene and profane language, by meanes where of many
idle persons doe assemble, from whence proceede many tumults and
disorders." When they remember the license that was accorded in
Charles the Second's London to theatrical performers, readers will be
disposed to think that John Scudamore, gentleman, must have been a
very lewd person and that his booth at Whitechapel must have been
an extremely scandalous place of entertainment.

(g.) The Malicious and Scandalous Words of Thomas Pride, Gentleman.—That the dissolute and disorderly gentlemen of James the
Second's capital were as unruly and regardless of decorum as the disorderly gentlemen who raised routs and troubled the conservators of the
peace of Middlesex in the earlier years of his brother's actual reign, may
be inferred from the way in which Thomas Pride, late of St. James's
parish within the liberties of Westminster, gentleman (vide pp. 313,
314), declared his low opinion of Andrew Lawrence, esq., J.P. for
Middlesex, under the very windows of that magistrate's usual place of
abode. By a True Bill, preserved in S.P.R., 21 February, 3 James II.,
Mr. Thomas Pride was charged with having at St. James's parish, on
the last day of January last past, " in the presence and hearing of divers
of the King's lieges and subjects, spoken and declared in a high voice
before the dwellinghouse of Andrew Lawrence, esq., J.P. for Middlesex,
in order to procure a tumult and riot in and near the said dwellinghouse, these malicious and scandalous words, to wit, 'Justice Lawrence,
by God, is a pimpe and a . . . . .' " Times have changed and we have
changed with them greatly, since a gentleman could give expression to
his dislike of a justice of the peace, by bawling abuse of this kind at his
front door, in hope of inciting a mob to force the door, break into the
house and wreck its furniture.

VIII. Savagery of the English in the Seventeenth Century.—Because
I speak of the comparative inhumanity of our forefathers of the seventeenth century, and the superior benevolence of the Victorian English,
it may not be inferred that the English of to-day are in my opinion as
considerate for the unfortunate, as benevolent to the poor, and as
vigilant and energetic in guarding the weak from oppression as they
ought to be. Nor may it be imagined that I have never reflected
with admiration on the humanity and sympathetic sweetness of the
brightest spirits and noblest natures of our people during the years
covered by the present volume. When I speak of the defective
humanity of Charles the Second's subjects, I refer to the ordinary
or distinctly inferior or unquestionably vicious natures of every social
class.

Deriving their notions of right and wrong, justice and injustice, from
the municipal laws which they obey, ordinary men and women catch
the tone and temper of those laws. In proportion as the laws are
humane or inhuman, the ordinary people of the various classes from
the highest to the lowest are benevolent or cruel. Living under
barbarous criminal laws that were executed with deliberate and intentional disregard for the finer sensibilities of human nature, our forefathers of the seventeenth century may be said to have been educated
to honour cruel discipline as wholesome discipline, to regard with complaisance all suffering from which they were exempt, and to think disdainfully of benevolence and compassion as sentimental weaknesses
that would be fruitful of mischief, if they were not kept in restraint. It
follows that Charles the Second's period resembled in some respects all
previous periods, when the stick was in every man's hand, and nearly every
man used the stick as an instrument for the punishment of persons
under his authority. It was a time when gentlemen caned their menservants, ladies beat their maid-servants, fathers of gentle birth horsewhipt their sons, mothers of gentle degree chastised their grown
daughters, and teachers, from the head masters of our public schools to
the pedagogues of village schools, flogged their pupils with extravagant
severity. Whilst people of social condition and credit dealt thus harshly
with persons in subjection to them, individuals of inferior quality—
tradesmen, artisans, handicraftsmen—in compliance with the spirit of
the age and its municipal law, made barbarous assaults on their
apprentices.

Now and again masters and mistresses were charged before Justices
of the Peace with beating their servants with a violence that ' exceeded
the limits of wholesome correction,' and were ordered to pay a fine for
the misdemeanor; but for one master who was punished thus lightly
for a brutal assault, for which an employer of labourers would now-adays be sent to prison, a hundred masters perpetrated worse assaults on
their apprentices with impunity. It is not surprising that, whilst the
law flogged culprits on their bare backs through the best streets and
most fashionable squares of the town, austere but far from worthless
persons felt themselves justified in copying the rigour of the law in the
government of their children and dependants. Even less surprising is
it that the law's example sometimes stimulated and intensified the
cruelty of the inferior and positively vicious, till it found vent in
excesses of execrable barbarity. Of such barbarity an appalling example
is given in the entry (vide, p. 149) that relates to the indictment and
conviction of—

(a.) Elizabeth Houlton's Murderers.—The indictment on which John
Sadler, late of Stepney, labourer, and Letitia Wiggington, late of the
same parish, wife of William Wiggington, labourer, were tried for the
murder of Elizabeth Houlton, spinster, certifies that on 24th December,
32 Charles II., the said John Sadler and Letitia Wiggington assaulted
the said Elizabeth Houlton at Stepney, and that John Sadler then and
there slew and murdered the said Elizabeth Houlton, by flogging her
'in et super dorsum, ventrem, femora, pectus, brachia, caput, faciem,'
with a whip commonly called a 'Catt with Nyne tayles,' so that she
died of the said flogging on the following day, and that the said Letitia
Wiggington was present at the said murder, and aided and encouraged
the said John Sadler to commit it. Found 'Guilty,' John Sadler and
Letitia Wiggington were both sentenced to be hanged. As all my
knowledge of Elizabeth Houlton and her murderers has come to me
from the annotated indictment preserved in G. D. R., 17 Jan., 32
Charles II., I cannot say what provoked Elizabeth Houlton's murderers
to punish her in so barbarous a manner. Cruel things are still done on
English soil, but I venture to say it would be impossible to find in the
darkest haunts of the criminal classes of Victorian England a man and
woman of the English race, capable of co-operating to kill one of their
countrywomen as John Sadler and Letitia Wiggington co-operated in
killing the wretched woman who died from the lashes of their cat with
nine tails.

(b.) Another Example of Woman's Savagery temp. Charles II.—
An annotated indictment (vide p. 76), that is preserved in G. D. R.,
25 April, 29 Charles II., tells how Robert Dines alias Deans, labourer,
William Dines alias Deans, labourer, and Margaret Dines alias Deans,
spinster, with the intention of maiming and deforming Jane King, lay
in wait for and assaulted the same Jane King at Endfield co. Midd. on
20th Feb., 29 Charles II., and how with the encouragement and aid of
the aforesaid Robert and William, the said Margaret Dines alias
Deans with a knife cut and disabled the right eye of the said Jane
King with the design of disfiguring her. Found 'Guilty,' the said
Robert, William, and Margaret were all three sentenced to be hanged,
under the well-known Coventry Act of 22 and 23 Charles II., which
enacted "that if any person should of malice aforethought, and by
lying in waite, unlawfully cut out, or disable the tongue, put out an eye,
slit the nose, cut off a nose and lip, or cut off or disable any limb or
member of any other person, with intent to maim or disfigure such
person, his counsellors, aiders, and abettors, should be guilty of felony
without benefit of clergy."

(c.) Activity of 'the Spirits' in spiriting People out of the Country.—The
cruelty of ordinary English people and absolute barbarity of the vilest sort
of Charles the Second's subjects are exemplified with painful impressiveness by the number of persons indicted for seizing young people of
both sexes at the river side, carrying them on board ship with intent to
transport them to the plantations and there sell them for slaves, and by
the number of persons who were convicted of having actually stolen
young people of their own country and race and sold them to planters
of the West Indies or the American mainland. Whilst the cruelty of
the meanest sort of the English people is indicated by these indictments, the general indifference of society at large to the doings of these
especially odious kidnappers and to the sufferings of their victims is
no less strikingly displayed by the comparative leniency of the punishments, accorded to those of the miscreants who were convicted of an
offence so unspeakably inhuman.

Of course, the kidnappers who received some measure of punishment
were only a small minority of the kidnappers who followed this barbarous trade; for the stealers and salesmen of human kind took every
precaution against detection, working as noiselessly and secretly as 'the
spirits.' It was seldom that, on being surprised by the disappearance
of his son or his apprentice, a tradesman had any clue whereby to
track out the thief who had carried off the missing lad. Once in a
while it happened that a young person, who had been inveigled by 'a
spirit' on board a vessel lying in the Thames, was rescued by the
prompt action of a sagacious and energetic parent, before the ship
weighed anchor and moved down the river. But it is questionable
whether one out of every twenty persons taken on board outbound
vessels by the wily kidnappers was so fortunate as to escape transportation. Of the grown men and grown women who were taken against
their will to western plantations, few lived to return to England in time
to discover their captors and put them in the dock at the Old Bailey.
The fragmentary records lying at the Clerkenwell Sessions House afford
me no sufficient data for either a precise or approximate statement of
the number of persons who were spirited out of Middlesex to the West
Indies or America during Charles the Second's actual reign; but the
indictments, recognizances, and entries in court-books relating to the
nefarious activity of 'the spirits,' still to be found in those attenuated
and wasted records, are sufficiently numerous to justify a confident
opinion that the individuals of both sexes, taken in that period from
the metropolitan county to our transatlantic colonies by the kidnappers
and their confederates, were a considerable number.

What was the punishment accorded to the miscreants who were convicted of enriching or attempting to enrich themselves by stealing and
selling into slavery persons of their own country and race? By the old
Jewish law the crime of stealing and selling a man, or stealing a man
with intent to sell him, was punished with death. "He," it is written
in Exodus, "that stealeth a man and selleth him, or if he be found in
his hand, he shall surely be punished with death." The civil law dealt
in the same way with man-stealers. "So likewise," says Blackstone,
"in the civil law the offence of spiriting away and stealing men and
children was punished with death." But the common law of England
was content to punish this atrocious offence with fine, imprisonment and
the pillory. And from a remarkable entry in the last extant folio of the
Middlesex Gaol Delivery Register, it appears that in the time of Charles II.
the clemency of the crown was shown in preserving from this moderate
punishment a man who had been convicted at the Old Bailey of seizing
and carrying off a certain Thomas Stone with the intention of transporting him against his will to Virginia.

(a.) William Haverland's Attempt to steal and transport Thomas
Stone.—At the Newgate Gaol Delivery, held at the Old Bailey on 13th
Jan., 22 Charles II., and divers ensuing days, one William Haverland
was tried, on an indictment that has perished, for assaulting, &c., one
Thomas Stone, with intent to transport him against his will to Virginia.
The lost indictment doubtless set forth that, besides assaulting the said
Thomas Stone, at some parish of Middlesex, the said William Haverland carried him against his will on board a certain ship lying in the
Thames, with intent to transport him to Virginia and there to sell him
for profit; but the brief note touching the offence for which William
Haverland was tried runs in these words: "William Haverland—pro
insult' super Thomam Stone ea intenc'one ad ipsum in Virginiam
transportand.'" Thomas Stone appears to have been one of those
especially fortunate persons who, after having been 'spirited' on board
ship, had the good fortune to escape from their captors before the
ship dropt down the river. Arraigned on the charge indicated by the
note in the G. D. Reg., William Haverland was found 'Guilty' by a
jury, and was sentenced to pay a fine of forty marks, to be held in
Newgate Gaol till he should have paid the fine, and to be put upon
the pillory on three several days—on the first day at East Smithfield,
on the second at Ratcliffe Cross, and on the third at Holborn, near
Chancery Lane end—with a paper setting forth his offence upon his
head. The clerk, who wrote the note of the trial, verdict, and sentence
in the Gaol Delivery Register on some day of January, 22 Charles II.,
added to the note in the following June these words, to wit, Postea
septimo die Junii prox' futur' profert perdon' D'ni Regis p'missa per
donan' = afterwards, on the seventh day of June next to come, he
produces the pardon of the Lord the King pardoning the premises.
Clearly this 'Spirit' had powerful friends. In January, 22 Charles II.,
he stood in the dock of the Old Bailey charged with an abominable
crime, was found 'Guilty,' and was sentenced to fine, imprisonment
and the pillory. That his judges approved the finding of the jury may
be inferred from the fact that, instead of deferring sentence till they
should have deliberated further on the case, they forthwith delivered
judgment on the offender. Yet, in June, the convicted man-stealer
appears in court with the king's pardon in his hand. The culprit may
have been imprisoned in Newgate Gaol, or in the custody of mainpernours, from the date of his trial to the day of his reappearance in court;
but he certainly escaped the other items of his sentence—the considerable fine and the torture of the pillory. One would like to know the
considerations that determined the King to grant him a pardon.

(b). Guildford Slingsby, Son of Walter Slingsby, esq., Spirited from
Middlesex to Virginia by William Thew.—At the Newgate Gaol Delivery
held on 7th June, 23 Charles II., one William Thew was arraigned and
tried on an indictment (vide p. 22) charging him with having assaulted
Guildford Slingsby, son of Walter Slingsby, esq., at St. Katherine's, co.
Midd., on 10th November, 22 Charles II., and with having on the same
day taken him against his will from St. Katherine's aforesaid on board a
certain ship, called the John of London, then lying in the river Thames,
and further with having transported the same Guildford Slingsby to
Virginia, in parts beyond the sea, with the intention of selling him in
Virginia to the gain and profit of the same William Thew, and to the
utter ruin of the same Guildford Slingsby. On being found 'Guilty,'
William Thew was sentenced to pay a fine of one hundred marks, was
committed to prison there to remain until he should have paid the same
fine, and was further sentenced to be pilloried on three several days, to
wit, on the first day upon the pillory at Tower Hill, on the second day
upon the pillory at St. Katherine's, and on the third day upon the pillory
in the Strand near the Maypole, and during each infliction of the torture
of the pillory to wear upon his head a placard setting forth his offence.
It was further ordered by the Court (vide p. 276) that, after he should
have paid the fine and undergone the punishment he should be held in
prison until he should have found good sureties for his appearance at
the Gaol Delivery next following the date of the recognizances, and for
his good behaviour in the mean time.

It is probable that, if he followed the trade of 'a Spirit' after this discipline, William Thew forbore to spirit away the son of an esquire who
was capable of prosecuting the law against his son's captor and transporter with effect. The punishment accorded to William Thew seems
to have been as severe a punishment as a Spirit ever underwent in the
time of Charles the Second. But if it be compared with the punishments meted out to far less heinous malefactors, it may be called a
lenient punishment. Had he assaulted Walter Slingsby, esq., on the
highway and then and there robbed him of a few pounds, William Thew
would have been hung. Had he stolen Squire Slingsby's riding-horse,
William Thew would have been hung. As he only assaulted young
Guildford Slingsby and stole him from his father, with intent to sell the
youngster into slavery, the law let William Thew go his way, after correcting him with a fine, a term of imprisonment, and three exhibitions
on the pillory.

(c.) A Milder Sentence on 'a Spirit.'—On 25th Sept., 36 Charles II.,
Jane Price, wife of one . . . . Price, of St. Andrew's Holborn, yeoman
(vide p. 245), assaulted a certain Richard Jackson at the said parish,
and subsequently on the same day conveyed him against his will on
board a certain ship called The Jeofferey, then lying in the river Thames,
with the intention of unlawfully and forcibly transporting him to Virginia
and there selling him for her own gain. Just about a year and five
months later, to wit, on 22nd Feb., 2 James II., Jane Price was brought
to the dock at the Old Bailey for thus spiriting Richard Jackson on
board ship, when she withdrew a previous plea of 'Not Guilty,' and
confessed the indictment that charged her with so grave an offence.
Convicted by her own confession, Jane Price was fined £1 6s. 8d. and
sent to the New Prison, there to remain until she should have paid the
fine.

(d.) A still more lenient Sentence on a female 'Spirit.'—On 1st Sept.,
32 Charles II., Ann Servant (vide p. 147), the wife of Ralph Servant,
late of Stepney, co. Midd., yeoman, assaulted Alice Flax, spinster, and
afterwards on the same day conveyed the same Alice Flax against her
will on board the ship called The Elizabeth and Katherine, then lying
in the river Thames, and afterwards in the same ship transported the
same Alice to Virginia, and there sold her for the gain and profit of the
same Ann Servant. For this offence of spiriting Alice Flax to Virginia,
and there selling her, Ann Servant was placed in the dock at the Old
Bailey, on 20th Feb., 35 Charles II., when she withdrew her previous
plea of 'Not Guilty,' and confessed the indictment. The sentence of
the Court was, that Ann Servant should pay a fine of 13s. 4d. for having
stolen a woman of her own country and race, carried her against her
will to Virginia, and there sold her into bondage.

(e.) An even more startling Sentence for Woman-Stealing.—On 26th
Sept., 36 Charles II., two 'Spirits' (vide pp. 245, 246), to wit, Mary
Gwyn, wife of William Gwyn, late of St. Botolph's-without-Aldgate, co.
Midd., yeoman, and Thomas Black, late of the said parish, yeoman,
assaulted a certain Alice Deakins, spinster, ætat. 16, daughter of Robert
Deakins, at the said parish, and afterwards, upon the said 26th Sept.,
conveyed the same Alice Deakins on board a ship called The Concord,
then lying in the river Thames, with the intention of transporting the
same Alice to Virginia and selling her there for their own gain and profit.
On being arraigned on an indictment charging them with this offence,
Mary Gwyn and Thomas Black both confessed the indictment, whereupon the sentence of the Court was, that each of the two woman-stealers
should pay a fine of twelve pence, and should be committed to the New
Prison, there to remain until the fine should be paid. The two kidnappers confessed that they had stolen Alice Deakins with the intention of shipping her to and selling her in America, and they were only
sentenced to pay a trivial fine and remain in prison till they had
paid it.

Whilst considering these trivial punishments for an offence that
clearly appeared much less heinous to our ancestors of Charles the
Second's time than it appears to the English of this less cruel age,
students should also consider the several indictments that do not seem
to have resulted in either a trial or a confession of guilt made in open
court. No clerical note touching sentence, verdict, or trial appears on
(1) the True Bill (vide pp. 232, 233) against Richard Bridgman for
spiriting Robert Weston to Antigua, and there selling him; (2) the True
Bill (vide p. 72) against Humfrey Gardener for spiriting Mary Sunderland on board ship, with intent to transport her to Jamaica; (3) the
True Bill (vide pp. 155, 156) against Diana Middleton for spiriting Mary
Hartley on board ship, with intent to transport her to Virginia; (4) the
True Bill (vide p. 156) against the same Diana Middleton for spiriting
Margaret Tower on board ship, with intent to transport her to Virginia; or
(5) on the True Bill (vide pp. 190, 191) against Matthew Trim and Sarah
Falconer for spiriting Elizabeth Partridge on board the ship in which
the same Mathew Trim subsequently transported the same Elizabeth to
Virginia and there sold her. "Po se," = he or she puts himself or
herself on a jury, i.e., pleads ' Not Guilty,' is the only annotation on
four other True Bills for stealing people with intent to sell them, to wit,
(1) the True Bill (vide pp. 78, 79) against James Buckle for spiriting
Hester Lambert from Middlesex to Virginia, and there selling her;
(2) the True Bill (vide pp. 70, 71) against Elizabeth Collier for spiriting
Sarah Price to Virginia, with the intention of selling her; (3) the True
Bill (vide pp. 72, 73) against Thomas Gore for spiriting Edward Meade
on board ship, with intent to transport him to Virginia; and (4) the
True Bill (vide p. 65) against John Rudd for spiriting John Hewlett on
board ship, transporting him to Virginia and there selling him.

From this remarkable absence of annotations touching verdicts and
sentence it may be inferred that the kidnappers charged by indictments
were not tried for the offences of which they were accused, but were
allowed by the Court to appease and compensate their prosecutors with
payment of money. In like manner one may assume that in passing
the lenient and even laughably trivial sentences, which have been submitted to the reader's consideration, judges had regard to the pecuniary
compositions made between the doers and sufferers of wrong. Anyhow,
it is certain that, in the time when Mary Gwyn and Thomas Black,
convicted on their own confession of spiriting Alice Deakins on board
The Concord with intent to transport her to and sell her in America,
were sentenced to pay a fine of only one shilling each, the offence committed by a kidnapper in stealing a humble and quite insignificant
person was not regarded as the heinous crime which Blackstone declares it to have been, and which it really was.

IX. Minor Offences and Curious Indictments.—In some of the True
Bills, which may be described as curious indictments for minor offences,
readers of this volume will come upon some obsolete kinds of knavery
and malfeasance, that will be serviceable to future writers on the social
condition and usages of the inhabitants of Middlesex in the seventeenth
century.

(1.) Knaves and Cheats.—It will amuse the perusers of this preface
to glance at a few examples of the tricks by which the rogues of Charles
the Second's time used to get possession of the money and goods of
honest folk, without exposing themselves to prosecution for felony.

(a.) Edward Wilkinson's attempted Fraud upon Musgrave Bibby.—
At a time when he was apprehensive of being troubled by the
ecclesiastical authorities of his parish for his practice of consorting
with conventiclers, Mr. Musgrave Bibby (otherwise spelt 'Beby'), of
St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, vintner (vide pp. 156, 157), received a visit on
30th Nov., 33 Charles II., from Edward Wilkinson, who introduced
himself to the wine-merchant as an officer attached to the Court of the
Bishop of London. After offering himself in this assumed character to
the dealer in strong drinks, the sham officer of a court, with which he
was in no way connected, served upon Master Bibby a sham writ,
requiring him to appear within three days of the service of the spurious
writing before the Bishop of the diocese, at his Prerogative Court held
at Doctors' Commons Hall, there to take an oath touching certain
matters. The impostor then went on to say that, for a payment of
£31 15s. 6d. he would engage to stay further prosecution of the said
process. As the True Bill, from which I have gained these particulars,
does not charge the cheat with having extorted the money, but only
with having designed to extort it from Master Musgrave Bibby, it may
be assumed that Edward Wilkinson's attempt on the wine-merchant's
purse was unsuccessful.

(b). Knavish Dealers in Hair.—By a True Bill preserved in S. P. R.,
8 April, 30 Charles II., William Noyes and William Hammond, both
late of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields yeomen, were indicted at Sessions of
the Peace for a successful attempt to defraud one Dymock Ely of the
said parish. Coming to Master Dymock Ely (presumably a wigmaker) with two bags of hair in their custody,—the one bag containing
twenty-four ounces of hair worth £14 8s., and the other bag containing
twenty-four ounces of hair worth only 14s.,—the two rogues sold to
Master Dymock Ely the choice and valuable hair and received from
him the sum of fourteen pounds and eight shillings in full payment for
it. But before withdrawing from the scene of this business transaction
the knaves took occasion to shift the two bags of equal weight, so that
they contrived to carry off the twenty-four ounces of hair for which
they had received £14 8s., and to leave behind them the bag of cheap
hair. Of course, when attention was called to the matter, the
knaves declared it a mere mistake for which they were extremely sorry.
Instead of being charged with stealing, they were only charged with
fraudulently, unlawfully, and secretly carrying off the costly hair and
fraudulently leaving the comparatively worthless hair in its place. It
does not appear from any minutes on the bill how the knaves were
punished or whether they received any punishment for their endeavour
to keep what they had sold.

(c.) Obtaining Goods under False Pretences.—It having occurred to
Eleanore Bonnett, wife of William Bonnett, of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields,
yeoman (vide p. 79) that it would be well for her to get possession of
some of the goods and chattels belonging to Alice Challenor, of St.
Clement's Danes', and to get possession of them without exposing
herself to a charge of feloniously stealing them, the said Eleanore Bonnett went to the shop of the said Alice Challenor, and in the absence of
the said Alice Challenor, persuaded Dorothy Challenor, the said Alice's
servant, to allow her to take away thirty yards of lace worth fourteen
pounds and five shillings and two grey silk lace cornetts worth fifteen
shillings. The representations by which Eleanore Bonnett persuaded
Dorothy Challenor to put up these goods, appraised at fifteen pounds,
were to this effect. There was a certain lady, residing in St. James's House
in St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, who wished to buy divers yards of lace
and two silk caps, and that, if Dorothy Challenor would allow her
the said Eleanore Bonnett to take the said lace and cornetts and show
them to said lady, she, the said Eleanore, would be prompt in restoring the
same lace and cornetts, in case the lady did not care for them, or
in bringing to the same Dorothy the money for the goods, should the
lady like and take them. Having thus obtained possession of the
goods, Eleanore Bonnett neither restored the goods nor paid the price
for them. On inquiry it was ascertained that no such lady as Eleanore
Bonnett had spoken of was living at St. James's House. Found
'Guilty' by a jury at Hickes Hall of having obtained the goods worth
£15 by false pretences, Eleanore Bonnett was fined by the court in
the sum of twenty-six shillings and eight pence, which fine she forthwith
paid to the Sheriff in court.

(d.) The Fraud of the Sham Postmen.—On the 7th July, 29 Charles
II., in the absence of William Freeman, esq., from his dwellinghouse
in St. Giles's-in-the-Fields, two rogues named Cornelius Crouch and
William Leader (vide p. 78) came to the said house and there told
Elizabeth Goodwin, spinster, one of the servants of the said William
Freeman, esq., that they were letter-carriers in the service of the Postmaster-General, Henry Earl of Arlington, that they were the bearers of
nine letters addressed to her master from parts beyond sea, and that
the Postmaster-General's fee for delivering the same letters was thirtysix shillings and six pence. Each of the nine letters bore a postal-mark
that had the appearance to Elizabeth Goodwin of being a genuine mark
of the Post Office. Under these circumstances, Elizabeth Goodwin
took the letters in, and paid the letter-carriers out of her master's
moneys the thirty-six shillings and six pence which they demanded.
On the matter being looked into, it was discovered that the nine letters
were spurious letters, that they had not been brought to England from
parts beyond sea, that the postal mark upon them was not a genuine
post-mark, and that, instead of being letter-carriers in the service of the
Postmaster-General, Cornelius Crouch and William Leader were two
rogues and cheats. Arraigned at Sessions of Peace on a charge of
cheating William Freeman, esq., by imposing upon Elizabeth Goodwin
with a false story and spurious letters marked with sham marks, each
rogue confessed the indictment and was fined in the sum of forty
shillings.

(2.) Vagabondage coloured with an Affectation of Industry.—Dealing
with ordinary vagrants as they had dealt with them during the thirty
years next preceding 19 Charles II., the Justices of the Peace for
Middlesex during the period covered by this volume displayed notable
activity in hunting down and punishing a class of individuals, whom
they were pleased to regard as especially crafty and impudent vagabonds, because they coloured their vagabondage with a show of labour,
in order to escape punishment for their pernicious vagrancy. If a poor
man essayed to earn his living by hawking beef or other victuals in the
open streets, he was proceeded against as a vagabond, who was colouring his habitual vagrancy by forestalling the markets. When a woman
went forth with a stock of glass wares and offered them for sale at
houses in the outskirts of the town, she was regarded and dealt with by
the law as an idle and mischievous loiterer, who coloured her vagabondage by affecting to be an itinerant seller of articles, that should be
bought only in the shops of honest tradesmen who paid rates and taxes.
The pedlar who left his lodging at break of day with a heavy pack
of Holland cloth or Scotch cloth on his back, and returned at night-fall
after trudging from farmhouse to farmhouse in search of housewives
desirous of buying a few yards of the fabric, did not pass his time in
idleness. But in the eye of the law he was a vagabond, and there were
Justices who maintained that such a vagrant should be flogged all the
more severely, on account of his hypocrisy in pretending to be an
honest and laborious trader in cloth, when he was merely indulging his
evil disposition to roam about, and by his particular way of colouring
his vagrancy encroached on the privileges of the drapers, and put in
his pocket money which ought to find its way into the hands of
respectable shop-keepers. The same view was taken of the tinkers who
went about the suburbs, and the rural districts of Middlesex, selling
articles of tin-ware, and doing odd jobs of tinker's-work at private
houses.

The Justices of Peace, the merchants, the thriving shopkeepers, spoke
hard words of the crafty vagrants who injured trade by colouring their
vagrancy in so deceitful a manner. Sometimes they grew indignant at
the amazing impudence of these wandering knaves, who, instead of
doing their work, as they were pleased to call it, as noiselessly and
as unobtrusively as possible, had the audacity to cry aloud in the streets
and lanes 'Scotch cloth; d'ye want any Scotch cloth ?' 'Kettles to
mend !' 'Have you any work for a tinker to do?' 'Buy my drinkingglasses.' 'Knives and scissors to grind, oh!' 'Bring out your knives
and scissors to grind, oh!' It will amuse readers to glance at some of
the indictments on which vagrants of this shameless and especially
hurtful kind were brought to trial at Sessions of the Peace.

(a.) The Case of Margaret Wyatt.—On 14th August, 23 Charles II.
(vide pp. 30, 31) Margaret Wyatt shocked many of the witnesses of her disorderly conduct at St. Clement's Danes' co. Midd. by wandering abroad
with a stock of drinking glasses and other glasses, and offering to sell the
same glasses to divers of the King's lieges, not at open fair or market, but
at the private dwellinghouses of the same lieges. Margaret Wyatt's conduct on this particular day was possibly the more interesting because
she had already received an intimation of the intention of the Glass
Sellers Company to prosecute her for encroaching on their monopoly.
Three days before, to wit, on 11th August, the recognizances of Michael
Sparkes of St. James's, Clerkenwell, yeoman, and John Webb of the
Liberty of the Rolls cordwainer, in the sum of £20. each, had been
taken for Margaret Wyatt's appearance at the next General Sessions of
the Peace at Hickes Hall, then and there "to answer the Complaint
of the Master Wardens and Assistants of the Company of Glass Sellers,
London, for wandering up and down to sell glasses." That she had in
Master Webb and Master Michael Sparkes two sufficient friends to
preserve her from imprisonment during the interval between 11th August
and the next General Sessions of Peace, seems to indicate that, though
a humble woman, she belonged to a social class distinctly superior
to the class most given to disorderly conduct. She may have been
a person acting in concert with the Glass Sellers Company, in order
to get a judicial decision respecting the company's rights outside 'the
City.' Anyhow, Margaret Wyatt, wife of Thomas Wyatt of St. Mary
Olave's co. Surrey yeoman, appeared at the G. S. P., and having pleaded
'Not Guilty,' took her trial in October, 1671, on an indictment charging her with being a vagabond who coloured her vagabondage with a
deceitful air of industry, by offering glasses for sale as she wandered
about Middlesex. "Ac in hujusmodi sua circumvagacione" says the
indictment, "apud parochiam mencionatam et diversos alios locos
infra comitatum Middlesexie predictum adtunc ac diversis aliis diebus
et vicibus callide et subtiliter vendidit et utteravit quamplurima vitrea
diversorum generum diversis ligeis et subditis dicti Domini Regis
(juratoribus adhuc ignotis) in privatis domibus suis et non in apertis
feriis sive mercatu, Ea intencione ad colorandam dictam circumvagacionem et ad escapiendum a punicione pro ejus circumvagacione,"=
And in her wandering about after this manner at the said parish and
divers other places within the aforesaid county of Middlesex then and
on divers other days and occasions she craftily and cunningly sold and
uttered very many glasses of different sorts to divers of the said King's
lieges and subjects to the aforesaid jurors as yet unknown, in their
private houses and not in open fairs or market, with the intention to
colour her vagrancy and to escape punishment for her vagabondage.
Of this charge Mary Wyatt was found 'Not Guilty.' On what grounds
she was acquitted does not appear.

(b.) The Case of Anne Woodward.—On an indictment preserved in
S. P. R. 11 Jan., 23 Charles II., Anne Woodward of St. Giles's-inthe-Fields (vide p. 32) was arraigned and charged with having on 15th
Dec., 23 Charles II., and on divers other days and occasions before
and afterwards, been an idle and vagrant person in the said parish and
divers other places of Middlesex, in wandering abroad with linen cloth
and offering the same linen cloth for sale and selling it to divers of the
said King's lieges and subjects, in their private houses and not in open
fairs or markets, with the intention of colouring her said vagrancy and
escaping punishment. Convicted on these grounds, and on her own
confession of the indictment, of having been and of still being a vagabond, Anne Woodward was fined in a sum not stated by the annotator
of the True Bill.

Sentence on Alice Hall for hawking Linen Cloth.—By an indictment
preserved in the same S. P. R. of 11 Jan., 23 Charles II., Alice Hall
(vide p. 33) wife of John Hall of Stepney co. Midd. yeoman, was
charged with having been an idle and vagrant person on 20 Dec.,
23 Charles II., and on divers other days and occasions before and
afterwards at the said parish and divers other places of the said county,
in wandering abroad with linen cloth and cunningly and craftily selling
the same cloth to divers of the King's lieges and subjects in their
private houses and not in open fairs or markets, with the intention of
thereby colouring her vagabondage and escaping punishment for it.
Convicted of vagabondage on her own confession of the indictment,
Alice Hall was declared 'Guilty,' and was sentenced to be whipt.

That Alice Hall was so sentenced appears from the following clerical
note over her name on the indictment, to wit, "Cogn' Ind' h'et judiciu'
flagellari &c., judiciu' resp'."=She confesses the indictment: has judgment to be whipt &c., the judgment (i.e., execution of sentence) is
deferred. Even at this date, when so many years have passed since
the body of Alice Hall, and the bodies of her judges, and the body of
the beadle who flogged her bare shoulders if the sentence was executed,
went from this world, the humane reader would like to be assured that
the poor woman was not flogged for the crime of selling a few yards of
linen cloth to persons who wished to buy them. Unfortunately I cannot
give the assurance, for the record says no more in the way of mercy
than that the flogging was deferred.

(c.) Three Petty Chapmen sentenced to be flogged at Charing Cross for
Hawking Cloth about the Streets.—In the 36th year of Charles II. (vide
p. 232), William Erwing, Robert Murfort, and Rowland Betty, all three
late of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, labourers, were tried at Sessions of the
Peace on an indictment charging them with having on 7th March,
36 Charles II., and on divers days and occasions before and after the
said day wandered abroad at the aforesaid parish, and in divers other
places of Middlesex, under the name and style of Petty Chapmen,
"craftily and deceitfully using the art of buying and selling Scotch
cloth and Holland cloth, and wares pertaining to the art and faculty of
linendrapers." Found 'Guilty' by a jury, these three petty chapmen
were sentenced to be stript naked from the middle upwards, and to be
whipt till their bodies should be bloody, "at the whipping-post prope
Charing Crosse."

(d.) George Chambers and the Turners' Company.—On 25th November, 23 Charles II., recognizances were taken before Humphrey Weld, esq.,
J.P.(vide p. 32), of John Partington, of St. Clement's Danes', distiller, and of
William Watts, of Allhallows-within-the-Wall, brushmaker, in the sum of
five pounds each, and of George Chambers, of St. Mary's Overs, in
Southwark, chapman, in the sum of ten pounds, for the appearance of
the said George Chambers at the next Session of the Peace for
Middlesex, then and there "to answer the complaint of the Companie
of Turners for crying and selling in the streets as a pedler several wares
belonging to the Trades of the Turners."

(e.) Tinkers Crying aloud in the Streets.—Upon an indictment, preserved in S. P. R., 27 April, 1 James II., Anthony Sanders, late of St.
Giles's-without-Cripplegate, labourer (vide p. 285), was arraigned for
having been on the 17th March, 1 James II., and on divers days and
occasions before and after the said day, an idle and vagrant person at
St. Sepulchre's, co. Midd., and in divers other places of the same
county, wandering abroad and carrying about with him certain kettles
and skellets and other articles of merchandise, and crying in a loud
voice these words, to wit, "Have you any worke for a tinker?" Also
in the same S.P.R. is preserved the indictment on which another tinker,
John George, late of St. Giles's-in-the-Fields, was proceeded against at
Sessions of the Peace at Hickes Hall for having on the same 17th
March, 1 James II., wandered abroad as an idle vagabond in St. Giles'sin-the-Fields, carrying about certain kettles and skellets, and crying
aloud, "Have you any work for a tinker?" thereby colouring his
vagabondage, in order to escape punishment for it. Each of these
crafty and deceitful tinkers confessed the indictment, and was fined in
the sum of three shillings and four pence.

(f.) The Crime and Punishment of a Needy Knife-Grinder.—At
S.P.R. held at Hickes Hall on 25th Feb., 1 James II., Richard Hookham, late of St. James's, Clerkenwell, labourer, was arraigned on an
indictment charging him with having on the 16th day of the said month
wandered abroad in the said parish as an idle vagabond, carrying about
with him a wooden cart and a rotatory wheel, and crying and vociferating in a loud voice in and through places and lanes within the same
county these words, to wit, "Have you any knives to grind?", with the
intention of colouring his said vagrancy, and so escaping punishment
for it. Richard Hookham confessed this grave indictment, and was
fined in the sum of twelve pence.

In the body of this volume, students may find other examples of the
way in which our ancestors of the seventeenth century in their wisdom
and tenderness dealt penally with divers sorts of indigent but extremely
laborious people as idle and cunning vagabonds.

(3.) A Peril of the London Streets by Night as well as by Day.—Had
he been cognizant of the facts, that will be offered to the consideration
of readers in this sub-section of an editorial preface, it cannot be
questioned that, whilst describing the defects and incommodities of
Charles the Second's London, Lord Macaulay would have told his
readers how no man could move about the Merry Monarch's capital by
night or day on foot, without being in danger of dropping into a deep
pit or cellar, and so breaking his limbs, his ribs, or his neck. Readers
should remember that from the spacious times of great Elizabeth, when
poor scholars used to dive for their fourpenny dinners, down to the
close of the seventeenth century, and to still later times, London householders used their cellars for many other purposes besides the storage of
wine, ale, coals, firewood, and other provisions. In the more populous
quarters of the town, the cheaper ordinaries and public eating establishments were found in cellars, to which the customers descended by
stairs from the street. The poorer artisans had their shops in the
cellars of houses which they never entered. One consequence of the
restrictions on building new houses for the poor folk was that householders, who were licensed to entertain lodgers and sub-tenants under
the supervision of the constables and head-boroughs of their parishes,
found it to their advantage to let their cellars to indigent people for
places of abode. This practice of letting cellars to the meanest folk
was permitted to orderly and reputable householders, even in the days
when the laws against receiving lodgers and harbouring under-tenants
were most rigidly enforced, from care for the health of the over-populated town. It was possible for constables to whip foreign vagrants out
of London and back to their proper parishes in the country; but the
capital could not be relieved in that, or any similar way, of the natives
of London, who, whilst contriving to keep body and soul together, were
far too poor to take a house, however small and cheap it might be. It
followed, therefore, that a considerable proportion of the London poor
hid themselves at nightfall in cellars.

These inhabitants of cellars were permitted to enjoy and utilize the
modicum of daylight that came to their darksome rooms from the
streets, and even to keep the flaps of their street doors thrown back
by day for the more free admission of sunlight during the day, provided
they closed the flaps at nightfall, with proper care for the safety of
pedestrians in the street. Old vestry-books show that from time to time
vestries republished by the bellman the old standing orders for closing
cellar-doors that opened into public ways, on the approach of nightfall.
But the orders were never rigidly enforced for any considerable length
of time. There was an indisposition on the part of petty constables
and watchmen to be severe inquisitors in respect to the observance and
non-observance of rules, that were peculiarly vexatious to the occupants
of cellars. It followed from this official tolerance for a particular misdemeanour, and official tenderness for the occupants of underground
chambers, that tenants of cellars in the bye-streets and courts and alleys
of the best urban quarters were allowed to do as they pleased about
opening and closing the doors of their squalid homes. It followed also
that, whilst householders were not worried by the inferior officers of the
law because the occupants of their cellars left their flap-doors open,
householders were sometimes strangely inconsiderate for the public
safety, when for building or other purposes they broke ground and dug
pits in the public ways.

(a.) How Thomas Whitehead's Arm "became broake" in Gerrard
Street, Soho.—On 8th December, 36 Charles II., i.e. 1684 a.d., John
Young, late of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, carver, and Thomas Streeter,
late of the same parish, painter, appeared at Sessions of Peace, held
at Hickes Hall, to answer to a True Bill of indictment, charging them
(vide p. 238) with having, on 21st June last past, "in a certain place
called Gerrard Street, leading from a place called Pickadilly to a place
called Sohoe, dug a pit or vault ten yards broad and eleven feet deep,
in the public highway, in the which it is the wont and right of the
King's lieges and subjects to pass and repass with their horses, coaches,
and carriages, and unlawfully and unwittingly left the same vault open,
so that on the said 21st of June, between 10 p.m. and 11 p.m., one
Thomas Whitehead, in journeying by the aforesaid way, had the misfortune to fall into the aforesaid vault, in which fall his right arm
"became broake," a consequence of the said fall and fracture being
that Thomas Whitehead languished and lived languidly from the said
21st of June even to the day of the taking of this inquisition, to wit,
the 6th Oct. then next following." The carver and the painter made
no attempt to defend themselves. They had dug the pit; they had
not surrounded it with a fence that would save people from falling into
it in the hours of darkness. Each of the two misdemeanants confessed
the indictment, and was fined in the sum of three shillings and four
pence. The smallness of the fine, which they each forthwith paid to
the Sheriff, shows that the Court regarded them as unfortunate rather
than as gravely culpable persons.

Thomas Whitehead's accident and the consequent proceedings at
Hickes Hall certainly called the attention of the Middlesex and the
Westminster Justices of the Peace to the danger of allowing pitfalls to
remain open in the public streets, and were probably influential in
determining them to deal energetically with those householders of the
urban parishes of the metropolitan county who allowed their cellars
to remain open under circmstances which, from time to time, caused
unwary pedestrians to drop suddenly from the pavement to the ground
below the open flap-doors. Anyhow, vigorous war was made against
the careless householders during the last few weeks of Charles's time
and the first years of James's reign.

(b.) Measures taken for closing or guarding the Doors of Cellars opening into Streets.—In the file of Westminster Sessions of the Peace of
January, 36 Charles II., there are preserved fifty-three examples of a
sort of indictments, that had not come under my notice in the rolled files
of any previous year of Charles's reign, nor in the files of any year
of any previous reign—fifty-three indictments (vide pp. 260, 261) on
which as many persons were proceeded against, for leaving cellar-doors
open into streets within St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, St. Clement's Danes',
or St. Margaret's, Westminster. In the rolled files of the next General
Quarter Sessions of the Peace for the City and Borough of Westminster,
to wit, the G. Q. S. P. held on 22nd April, 1 James II., and divers
subsequent days, are preserved one hundred and twelve indictments
of as many persons, for leaving cellar-doors open into streets, lying
within one or another of the four following parishes, to wit, St.
Martin's-in-the-Fields; St. Paul's, Covent Garden; St. Mary's, Savoy;
and St. Margaret's, Westminster. The indictment of William Coast,
of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, runs thus:—

"The Jurors for our Lord the King upon their oath present That
William Coast late of the parish of St. Martin-in-the-Fields within the
Liberties &c. . . . . of the City Borough and Town of Westminster in
the county of Middlesex yeoman on the eighth day of January in
the thirty-sixth year of the reign of our Lord the King Charles the
Second by God's grace King of England Scotland France and Ireland
King defender of the faith &c. by force and arms &c. at the aforesaid
parish within the aforesaid Liberties in the aforesaid county did unlawfully open a certain chamber called A Celler there being near the public
street and the king's highway there called Pall Mall in the king's highway there extending two feet and six inches, And caused and permitted
the aforesaid chamber in the aforesaid street and king's highway to be
and remain open and uncovered, And by reason thereof the king's
highway was greatly straitened to the great peril of the lives and to the
mutilation of the limbs of the lord the King's subjects from time to
time passing about their lawful affairs through the aforesaid way near
the aforesaid chamber, and to the common injury of all the lord King's
subjects passing by the aforesaid common way &c."

The particular streets and places of the aforementioned parishes, or
near which the 112 aforementioned cellar doors lay open by night as
well as by day, were Hart Street, Bow Street, Russell Street, York Street,
Bridges Street, Exeter Street, King's Street, Rose Street, and Sandish
Street (in St. Paul's, Covent Garden), Duke Street, Charles Street, and
Pall Mall (in St. Martin's-in-the-Fields), Swan Yard, White Hart Yard,
Drury Lane, and the Strand (in St. Mary's, Savoy), Charles Street and
King Street (in St. Margaret's, Westminster). Of the 112 cellars, so
left open by night as well as by day, nineteen were cellars lying open in
or near Pall Mall. What a stir the morning papers would occasion
were they to announce some fine morning that soon after leaving his
club on the previous evening, and as he was walking up St. James's
Street, some well-known gentleman, say the present Attorney-General
or the Right Reverend the Bishop of Winchester, had fallen from the
pavement into an open cellar and broken his neck!

(c.) Sir Robert Clarke's Accident.—Sir Robert Clarke was neither a
bishop nor a luminary of the law, and for the best of reasons he was not
a member of a Pall Mall club-house in the first regnal year of James the
Second. But he was a personage of social moment, and was walking in
one of the most orderly thoroughfares of urban Middlesex, to wit, in the
ancient highway of Holborn, where people of quality and high fashion
still had their London homes, when (vide p. 300), some time between
6 p.m. and 7 p.m. of 1 Jan., 1 James II., he suddenly dropt through
the door of the cellar, which Benjamin Poole, late of St. Andrew's,
Holborn, yeoman, had unlawfully opened, and allowed to remain open.
As Benjamin Poole's cellar-door was six feet long and two feet wide,
there was room for a full-grown man to have a clear fall, and from the
language of the indictment on which Benjamin Poole was arraigned at
Hickes Hall, it may be inferred that Sir Robert Clarke, knt., had a
"clear drop," and that no bone of his body was broken by the accident.
But he was so greatly shaken and bruised by the fall, as to have languished
and lived in languor for several days by reason of the misadventure.
On being called to account for his misdemeanour in letting a gentleman of knightly degree and worth in for so awkward a tumble,
Benjamin Poole confessed the indictment, and was fined in the sum of
twelve shillings, which he forthwith paid to the Sheriff in Court.

X. Indictments of Recusants.—The reader who has already glanced
at the Calendar and Index of this volume, and observed how many
pages of both are covered with the names and descriptions of Recusants,
does not need to be assured that I have spent much labour in examining
the True Bills found against persons for keeping away from the services of
the Established Church, and the Recognizances binding individuals to
appear at Sessions of Peace to answer to charges of 'recusancy.' But
I may observe that this part of the labour of producing the materials of
the present book was greatly increased by the condition of the bills of
indictments, many of which have through friction become imperfectly
legible. What proportion of the persons charged with forbearing to
attend church, chapel, or any other usual place of common prayer,
were Catholics and what proportion of them were Protestant Nonconformists, I am quite unable to say. Whilst the names and known
history of a small minority of the indicted persons declare them to have
been Catholics, the indictments of the many bearers of obscure names
afford no indication of the religious views of the offenders. On the
other hand, the searcher of the calendar, who possesses some knowledge
of the Nonconformists of Charles the Second's capital, will not hesitate
in inferring from their names, that another small minority of the
individuals indicted for not going to church were Protestant dissenters.
But with respect to the great majority, perhaps even so large a majority
as seven-eighths, of the individuals indicted for staying away from
church, I am powerless to say whether a particular person was a Catholic
recusant or a Protestant recusant. Historical inquirers searching for
new data may, however, be assured that I have milked the Middlesex
Records to the last drop of their serviceable testimony touching both
sorts of recusants.

XI. Convictions of Conventiclers.—The Certificates of Convictions of
Conventiclers are a division of the Clerkenwell muniments that has
sustained losses almost as deplorable and quite as remarkable as those
losses of successive folios of the Sessions of Peace Register and the
Gaol Delivery Register, of which I spoke in an earlier section of this
preface. The careful student of Middlesex County Records, vol. iii.
does not need to be reminded that there are preserved at the Clerkenwell Sessions House two packets of Justices' Certificates of the convictions
of Conventiclers, convicted under the Conventicle Act in the 16th and
17th years of Charles the Second. Of those certificates, and also of other
proceedings against Protestant Nonconformists I spoke at length in
that 3rd volume of Middlesex County Records (vide Preface xxiii., xxiv.,
xxv., xxvi., and xxvii., and pp. 340, 341, 342, 343, 344, 345, 346, 347,
348, 349, et seq.). From the close of 17 Charles II. to the middle of 34
Charles II., no Certificates of Convictions of Conventiclers are preserved
in the Clerkenwell muniment-room. Of course, the Conventicle Act of 16
Charles II., which came into operation on 1st July, 1664, was passed
for only three years, and there was an interval between the date of its
expiration and the date of its renewal, with additional clauses (that
made it in truth a new statute), by the Parliament, which met on 19th
Oct., 1669. This second Conventicle Act received the royal assent on
11th April, 1670. Yet from the date of this second enactment (which
was enforced rigorously up to the end of Charles the Second's reign,
and was enforced leniently for some time under James II.) one comes
at Clerkenwell neither on a file of certificates of convictions, nor on a
single certificate before the midsummer of 34 Charles II., i.e., July,
1682, when one comes upon a series of files of such certificates,
running to the end of Charles's reign and onwards into James the
Second's 2nd regnal year.

How are we to account for the disappearance of the C. C. C. that
were signed and sealed by Justices of the Peace between the time when
the second Conventicle Act of nth April, 1670, first came into operation, and the July of 1682. Stout parchments, necessarily preserved so
long as the Conventicle Act was in force for their testimony to previous
convictions, they were not documents likely to perish from mould and
rot without leaving a trace of the massive packets in which they were preserved. Why have they disappeared, while the files for more than four
full years remain at Clerkenwell in a fairly sound state? They did not
rot wholly out of sight. They must have been taken from the Middlesex
County Records by some person or persons who forbore to restore them
to their proper place, even as the missing folios of the S. P. Register
and the missing folios of G. D. Register were withdrawn from the
Clerkenwell Sessions House by some person or persons.

I have no more knowledge of the person or persons who withdrew
the missing files of C. C. C. than I have of the person or persons who
withdrew the missing folios of two great Registers. But I know that
strange liberties were taken with the Middlesex Records in far-away
times. After speaking of ' the lamentable condition' in which the
earlier Middlesex Records were found by the Committee of Middlesex
Justices of the Peace who, a few years since, caused them to be put, as
far as possible, in good order, Mr. Basil Woodd Smith, J.P., the writer
of the memoir of Sir Baptist Hicks, which appears at the close of
this volume, observed, in the same Committee's printed Report on the
same county records (1884), "How much of this was due to their
treatment in the reign of William III. by the then acting Clerk of the
Peace, Mr. Harcourt, who removed them 'to his country house in
Holborne,' and was only induced to restore them by repeated and
peremptory orders of the Court, and how much to neglect, it is impossible to say." I know nothing of the considerations which determined
this eccentric Clerk of the Peace to remove the records from Hicks
Hall to his rural home. It is improbable that he removed them with
the intention of destroying them, or the design of selling them. But
whilst, in the absence of evidence to the point, it would be unfair to
charge the gentleman with a dishonourable purpose, it is not unfair to
think that the eccentric custodian of the Middlesex County Records,
who displayed a singular reluctance to obey the peremptory orders for
their restoration, retained a few folios and files at his country house,
when he restored the main body of the manuscripts to their proper
resting place.

The great value and interest of the files of C. C. C, that still remain
at the Clerkenwell Sessions House, quicken one's regret for the disappearance of a much larger number of Certificates. In those remaining
Certificates the patient searcher of the Middlesex muniments comes upon
the names of some of the most famous of the Anglican Nonconformists
who suffered for their opinions under our last two Stuart kings. It is
worthy of especial notice that one . . . . Baxter (probably Richard
Baxter), George Foxe, and William Penn figure amongst the conventiclers who are certified to have been fined for being conventiclepreachers.

(1.) Certificate of the Conviction of George Foxe.—By a C. C. C. dated
on 8th Oct., 35 Charles II. (vide p. 226), under the hand and seal of
Edward Guise, esq., J.P., it was certified—(a) That Alexander Parker,
of St. Clement's Lane, London, haberdasher, John Clarke, of Witney,
co. Oxon . . . ., Thomas Farley, of St. Paul's, Covent Garden, William
Wine, of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, glover, Michael Richards, of St.
Giles's-without-Cripplegate, weaver, Gregory May, of St. Margaret's,
Westminster, . . . ., and James Redhead, of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields,
. . . . ., were on the aforesaid day convicted before the said justice of
the peace of having been present together with some two hundred unknown persons at an unlawful conventicle, held under colour of exercising religion, &c, in a certain house of an unknown person in the Savoy,
co. Midd., in the forenoon of the 7th inst. Oct., and (b) That George
Foxe then and there took upon himself to preach to and teach the
persons assembled at the said conventicle, and (c) That a fine of £20
was imposed on the said George Foxe for his said offence by the said
J.P., and (d) That a fine of 5s. was imposed upon each of the other
aforenamed persons for their said offence of being present at the said
conventicle.

(2.) Two Convictions of William Penn.—These two Certificates of the
conviction of the famous quaker and philanthropist are the more interesting
because they were dated under the hand and seal of Sir Thomas Jenner,
knt., J.P., Serjeant-at-Law and Recorder of London, on a day (26th
Jan., 36 Charles II.) so near the death of Charles II., who had shown
the philanthropist much kindness, that they came to be filed with the
C. C. C. of 1 James II., probably because the fines were not actually
paid and levied till the first regnal year of the new sovereign, who regarded the quaker with approval and with a regard that may be called
friendship. Having settled his colony and seen Philadelphia assume
the aspect and proportions of a considerable town, William Penn returned
to England, in the later part of 36 Charles II., and journeyed to Newmarket to pay his loyal respects to the sovereign, whose health had for
some time shown signs of failing.

(a.) The Earlier of the Two Offences.—On 23rd Nov. of the same
year William Penn was present at a conventicle held in a certain house
of St. Margaret's, Westminster, under colour of exercising religion
otherwise than according to the liturgy and use of the Church of
England. Besides being present at this unlawful assembly, William
Penn took upon himself to preach to and teach the persons gathered
together at it. The Certificate of Conviction sets forth the famous
man's offence, conviction, and punishment, in the following words:—

"Middlesex, to wit: Be it remembered that on the twenty-third day
of November in the thirty-sixth year of our Lord Charles the Second
&c. more than five persons being subjects of this kingdom and above
the age of sixteen years were congregated under colour or pretext of
exercising religion in other manner than according to the Liturgy and
practice of the Church of England in a house situated in the parish of
St. Margaret's Westminster besides those of the family And a certain
William Penn took upon himself to preach to and teach the congregation
thus unlawfully congregated in the aforesaid conventicle against the form
of the Statute for this case published and provided as it appears sufficiently to me by the oaths of two credible witnesses to wit Elinor Shaftoe
and Hester Collingwood wherefore the aforesaid William Penn by this
my record is convicted and has forfeited the sum of twenty
pounds and therefore I have imposed upon the aforesaid William Penn
a fine of twenty pounds of the lawful money of England for his offence
to be levied from his goods and chattels and distributed according to
the direction of the aforesaid Statute In testimony of which thing I
Thomas Jenner knt. one of the Serjeants-at-Law of the Lord the King
Recorder of the City of London and one of the Justices of the said
Lord the King appointed to preserve the Peace for the aforesaid county
to this Record have put my hand and seal on the twenty-sixth of
January in the above-said year.

Thomas Jenner Recordr. Place of the Seal. [symbol]"

(b.) The Later of the Two Offences.—Another C. C. C, dated on the
same 26th Jan., 36 Charles II., under the hand and seal of the same
Justice of the Peace, shows (vide pp. 265, 266) that William Penn was
convicted of and fined for being present at another conventicle held in
a house lying in St. Margaret's, Westminster, on 7th Dec, 36 Charles
II., under colour of exercising religion, &c. The Certificate runs in
these words:—

"Middlesex to wit: Be it remembered that on the seventh day of
December in the 36th year of the reign of our Lord Charles the
Second now King of England &c. William Penn and others to the
number of five persons and more being subjects of this kingdom and
above the age of sixteen years were congregated in a conventicle or
congregation under colour or pretext of exercising religion in other
manner than according to the Liturgy and practice of the Church of
England in a house situated in the parish of St. Margaret of Westminster
besides those of the family and a certain unknown person took upon himself to preach to and teach the congregation thus unlawfully assembled
against the form of the statute for this case published and provided as
appears sufficiently to me by the oaths of two credible witnesses to wit
Hester Collingwood and Elinor Shaftoe whereby the aforesaid William
Penn is convicted by this my record and has forfeited the sum of five
shillings And therefore on that account I have imposed on the afore
said William Penn a fine of five shillings of the lawful money of
England for his offence and because the aforesaid preacher is unknown
and is not found I have further imposed upon the aforesaid William
Penn the sum of nine pounds and fifteen shillings for part of the aforesaid
unknown preacher's offence to be levied from his goods and chattels
and to be distributed according to the direction of the aforesaid statute
In testimony of which thing I Thomas Jenner knt. one of the Serjeantsat-Law of the said Lord the King Recorder of the City of London and
one of the Justices of the said Lord the King appointed to preserve the
peace for the aforesaid county to this record have put my hand and seal
on the twenty-sixth day of January in the aforesaid year.

Tho. Jenner, Recordr. Place of the Seal." [symbol]

The Hester Collingwood and Elinor Shaftoe who, in the manner and
to the effect indicated in the certificates, gave evidence against William
Penn on 26th Jan., 36 Charles II., were common informers, who at this
point of their respective stories were busy in hunting for conventiclers,
discovering their places of meeting, and bringing them to punishment. As
the rewards of a common informer for giving information against conventiclers were considerable, Hester Collingwood and Elinor Shaftoe
made a fine income, temp. Charles II., by their rather unwomanly
vocation. For the fair fame of the gentler sex, one would like to be
assured that the two ladies were conscientious enthusiasts, and sincerely
believed they rendered God and man good service in taking so much
trouble to compass the impoverishment of honest dissenters. One would
like also to know something about the costumes they wore, and what
disguises they employed, in order to win admittance to the secret meetings of the conventiclers whom they brought to justice.

XII. Verbal Contractions and Symbolic Letters used in the Annotations
of Indictments and in the Minutes of Gaol Delivery Registers, &c.—A
considerable time has elapsed since letters, addressed to me by strangers,
made me aware that I should be rendering inexperienced workers on
sessional records a service by putting in their hands a list of and key to
the verbal contractions and symbolic letters used by the clerks at the
Clerkenwell Sessions House in annotating the recognizances and indictments which they made up into rolled files, and in making the usual
entries in books of official record. For a time I entertained a design
of producing a perfect calendar of the abbreviations and significant
letters, with explanatory notes and extensions. On dismissing the project, when I had realized how much time, labour, and money it would
require to accomplish it, I determined to place at a convenient season in
one of my successive prefaces a key-calendar of all the more puzzling items
of stenographic Latin used by the clerical recorders. The result of this
determination is now offered to readers, in the hope that it may facilitate the labour of inexperienced editors of curial manuscripts, and
preserve them from the discomfort of knowing or suspecting themselves
to have made erroneous solutions of some of the 'letter puzzles.'